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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Complexities In Biomedical Decision-Making, George P. Smith Ii
Complexities In Biomedical Decision-Making, George P. Smith Ii
Scholarly Articles
Within the contemporary debate over medical ethics, without question the most striking weakness found is the lack of a basic yardstick against which either the "rightness" or "wrongness" of a physician's actions may be measured. No general agreement is to be found among physicians or ethicists acknowledging what ethical determinant the physician should or should not follow in a particular case. Yet, despite this conflict of uncertainties, a framework for principled decisionmaking does exist and can be found within the rubric of medical ethics.
Patient Dumping: Implications For The Elderly, George P. Smith Ii
Patient Dumping: Implications For The Elderly, George P. Smith Ii
Scholarly Articles
Before 1986, the Common Law provided that physicians and hospitals had no duty to admit or treat persons who sought their care except in limited circumstances. Congress enacted The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) to curb this so-called patient-dumping problem. EMTALA provides, essentially, that Medicare-participating hospitals must treat all patients who arrive in emergency conditions.
This article first discusses the patient-dumping problem and how EMTALA has provoked many hospitals to curtail their emergency facilities in order to avoid treating indigent and uninsured patients. The Article then proceeds to analyze the specifics of EMTALA’s main statutory provision, Section …
Terminal Sedation As Palliative Care: Revalidating A Right To A Good Death, George P. Smith Ii
Terminal Sedation As Palliative Care: Revalidating A Right To A Good Death, George P. Smith Ii
Scholarly Articles
Not everyone finds a “salvific meaning” in suffering. Indeed, even those who do subscribe to this interpretation recognize the responsibility of each individual to show not only sensitivity and compassion but render assistance to those in distress. Pharmacologic hypnosis, morphine intoxication, and terminal sedation provide their own type of medical “salvation” to the terminally ill patient suffering unremitting pain. More and more states are enacting legislation that recognizes this need of the dying to receive relief through regulated administration of controlled substances. Wider legislative recognition of this need would go far toward allowing physicians, in the exercise of their reasonable …
Harnessing The Human Genome Through Legislative Restraint, George P. Smith Ii
Harnessing The Human Genome Through Legislative Restraint, George P. Smith Ii
Scholarly Articles
The awesome predictive power of genetic medicine promises great advancements in not only the treatment of identifiable conditions but the prevention of their pathological manifestations. At the same time, the release and dissemination of this genetic or medical information poses a distinct risk of loss of privacy and stigmatization to carriers of genetic disorders. In order to safeguard the individual right of autonomy, privacy, confidentiality and informed consent-yet accommodate the legitimate interests of employers and insurers to obtain medical information relevant to their professional needs and economic responsibilities a balance must be struck legislatively at the federal and state levels …