Flashcards: Medical ethics

Iatrogenesis (from the Greek for "brought forth by the healer") refers to any effect on a person, resulting from any activity of one or more persons acting as healthcare professionals or promoting products or services as beneficial to health, that does not support a goal of the person affected.

A placebo (/pləˈsiːboʊ/ plə-SEE-boh; Latin placēbō, "I shall please" from placeō, "I please") is a simulated or otherwise medically ineffectual treatment for a disease or other medical condition intended to deceive the recipient.

Involuntary commitment or civil commitment (also known as sectioning in some jurisdictions) is a legal process through which an individual who is deemed by a qualified agent to have symptoms of severe psychiatric disease is court-ordered into treatment in a mental institution (inpatient) or in the community (outpatient).

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the Bible prohibits ingesting blood and that Christians should not accept blood transfusions or donate or store their own blood for transfusion.

("Emotional disabilities" redirects here. For other uses, see Emotional disability.) A mental disorder, also called a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a diagnosis by a mental health professional of a behavioral or mental pattern that may cause suffering or a poor ability to function in life.

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram.

Locked-in syndrome (LIS) is a condition in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes.

Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine.

The Doctors' trial (officially United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.) was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of German doctors that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany, after the end of World War II.

Cognitive liberty, or the "right to mental self-determination", is the freedom of an individual to control his or her own mental processes, cognition, and consciousness.

Political abuse of psychiatry is the misuse of psychiatry, including diagnosis, detention, and treatment, for the purposes of obstructing the human rights of individuals and/or groups in a society.

An institutional review board (IRB), also known as an independent ethics committee (IEC), ethical review board (ERB), or research ethics board (REB), is a type of committee used in research in the United States that has been formally designated to approve, monitor, and review biomedical and behavioral research involving humans.

Assisted suicide is suicide committed with the aid of another person, sometimes a physician.

The ethics involved within pharmaceutical sales is built from the organizational ethics, which is a matter of system compliance, accountability and culture (Grace & Cohen, 2005).

Human subject research is systematic, scientific investigation that can be either interventional (a "trial") or observational (no "test article") and involves human beings as research subjects.

Millennia ago, Hippocrates recognized the potential for injuries that arise from the well-intentioned actions of healers.

Genetic testing, also known as DNA testing, allows the the determination of bloodlines and the genetic diagnosis of vulnerabilities to inherited diseases.

Virodene is a controversial AIDS drug developed in South Africa, but rejected by the scientific community.

Voluntary euthanasia is the practice of ending a life in a painless manner.

Body donation, anatomical donation, or body bequest is the donation of a whole body after death for research and education.

Consent can be either expressed or implied.

Medical torture describes the involvement of, or sometimes instigation by, medical personnel in acts of torture, either to judge what victims can endure, to apply treatments which will enhance torture, or as torturers in their own right.

Participation of medical professionals in American executions is a controversial topic, due to its moral and legal implications.

The mature minor doctrine is an American term for the statutory, regulatory, or common law policy accepting that an unemancipated minor patient may possess the maturity to choose or reject a particular health care treatment, sometimes without the knowledge or agreement of parents, and should be permitted to do so.

Patient advocacy is an area of lay specialization in health care concerned with advocacy for patients, survivors, and carers.