CAMLAW : Complementary And Alternative Medicine Law Blog

Two patient deaths are reportedly attributable to an improper mixture of colchicine which was administered intravenously.

Wasting no time, the returned Bahamas PM has laid out seven ethical principles for his new government.

Research suggests a formula can be made to predict the kinds of ethical life-and-death choices people wish to make.

It's not yet Isaac Asimov's three laws of a positronic brain, but South Korea is drafting a code of ethics regarding robots.

The Medical Humanities Blog reported on a controversial ad showing a robot having serious mental health issues.

The New Yorker reports criticism of the popular show '24' as unreliastically using high-velocity narrative in repetivie 'ticking time bomb' scenarios.

The Whole Child integrative medicine pediatrician Larry Rosen forwarded information about resolution of the Virginia case involving pediatric avoidance of conventional care (oncology) in favor of alternative therapies.

An unanswered ethical question facing AI (artificial intelligence) is whether robots should be allowed to carry weapons.

Actually, dolpins have been taught to sing the theme from Batman.

The National Health Services in the United Kingdom proposes to implement genetic screening, based on Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), originally developed in the late 1980s to identify genetic defects and chromosomal abnormalities in embryos before they are transferred to the womb.

While the ethics and legality of stem cell practices are being debated worldwide, law firms are launching stem cell technology practice to capitalize on business opportunities.

A court ordered 16-year-old Abraham Cherrix to undergo integrative cancer treatment, which integrates conventional medicine and alternative therapies to treat cancer.

Bloggers can be sued for defamation, notes Lexblog, picking on a Washington Times article.

The "peaceful death" is misunderstood in Italy as well as here.

Ethical issues relating to the peaceful death are still misunderstood, according to LawPundit's review of new evidence regarding brain activity during a "vegetative state."

The New York Bar Association Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics has decided that with certain restrictions, a lawyer may ethically outsource legal support services overseas to a non-lawyer.

Contributing to the debate concerning legal status of embryos, one researcher now conceptualizes the possibility of according "limited legal rights."

In the Tibetan tradition of the medicine Buddha, everything becomes medicine. The Medicine Buddha brings healing, dispels sickness, and awakens the innate healing potential within every individual.

U.S. physicians, like their Australian counterparts, are deeply interested in legal and ethical issues concerning patient use of complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies.Key legal questions of concern to physicians include: (1) malpractice liability for negligent care and for inadequate informed consent; (2) licensure and credentialing; (3) scope of practice (the legally authorized practice boundaries for non-physicians, including CAM providers); (4) regulation of dietary supplements; (5) professional discipline; (6) third-party reimbursement; and (7) health care fraud. In Cohen MH, Legal and ethical issues in complementary medicine: a U.S. perspective, Med J Australia 2004;181:3:168-169, the Medical Journal of Australia features a comparison of key aspects of malpractice liability, informed consent, and licensure in the U.S. with the Australian perspective.

Yet another take on ethical issues in CAM, with an international twist, comes Ernst EE, Cohen MH, Stone J. Ethical problems arising in evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine. J Med Ethics 2004;30: 156-159. In this article, we examine some of the differences between conventional medicine and complementary and alternative medicine, and the implications of those differences for an ethics of CAM.

I'm proud of my colleague and friend Karen Adams, M.D., as lead author of Adams KE, Cohen MH, Jonsen AR, Eisenberg DM. Ethical considerations of complementary and alternative medical therapies in conventional medical settings. Ann Intern Med; 2002;137:660-664. We all worked hard to come up with a framework that balanced all the interests at stake--including the patient's--when clinicians have to make ethical decisions about recommending use or avoidance of specific CAM therapies.

Michael has published a new study with Kathi J. Kemper, MD, a leading pediatrician in integrative care. The study published in the journal Contemporary Pediatrics offers a number of cases showcasing a framework for legal and ethical analysis by clinicians advising concerning use of CAM therapies in pediatrics.