Medical Ethics | Penn Today

Abortion clinic websites may unwittingly aid patient prosecutions

More than 99% of abortion clinic web pages studied included widely used code that transferred user data to external entities, which could sell the data or provide it to law enforcement, without the clinics knowledge.

‘Is an abortion medically necessary?’ is not a question for ethicists to answer

Holly Fernandez Lynch, Steven Joffe, and Emily A. Largent of the Perelman School of Medicine write that ethics committees are not intended to second-guess clinical judgements about medical procedures or provide legal cover for institutions.

Inequities in maternal health care access are not new. They have deep roots in history

PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts says that today’s Black maternal health disparities are a reverberation of slavery, an echo of the federally funded health care and welfare programs which led to sterilization abuse.

Black patient receiving an injection in the arm by a medical professional.

Higher rates of chemical sedation among Black psychiatric patients points to inequities

Penn Medicine researchers also find that white patients are more likely to be chemically sedated in emergency departments at hospitals that treat high proportion Black patients, suggesting that hospital demographics can impact practice patterns.

Your doctor is moonlighting on TikTok as an influencer

Dominic Sisti of the Perelman School of Medicine said that, during the evolution of the internet in the 1990s, bioethicists were preoccupied by the Human Genome Project and overlooked the rise of social media and its impact on health care. “Social media was something that we as bioethicists just didn’t have our eyes on—and it’s coming back now to haunt us,” he said.

Biogen Alzheimer’s drug coverage threatens minorities’ access

Holly Fernandez Lynch of the Perelman School of Medicine spoke about the obstacles preventing less-privileged people from participating in clinical trials. “You typically have to live near the trial site or have the resources to travel. You have to be able to take time away from work and your caregivers need to do the same. You have to have reliable transportation,” she said.

The ethics of a second chance: Pig heart transplant recipient stabbed a man seven times years ago

Scott Halpern of the Perelman School of Medicine spoke about the importance of maintaining separation between legal and medical systems. “We have a legal system designed to determine just redress for crimes,” he said. “And we have a health-care system that aims to provide care without regard to people’s personal character or history.”

Doctor wearing a mask checks the blood pressure of a patient also wearing a mask.

Heart disease-protective diabetes drug is not used equitably

The medication GLP-1 RA treats diabetes and is linked to positive outcomes for heart disease patients, yet a Penn Medicine study has found inequities in its use along racial, ethnic, and economic lines

Medical worker in a face mask holds a clipboard for an African American person to sign.

Improving diversity in cancer clinical trials

The Cancer Clinical Trials Community Ambassador Training Program at the Abramson Cancer Center was established in August 2021 to create spokespersons and resources to increase awareness and access to cancer clinical trials in the diverse Philadelphia communities.

Three Penn faculty named Hastings Center Fellows

Holly Fernandez Lynch, Quayshawn Spencer, and Connie Ulrich have been named Hastings Center Fellows for deepening public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, science, and technology.

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