Ethical, Social, and Policy Issues: Introduction

Excerpt

Why do we need a special section in World Journal of Surgery on ethics, policy, and social issues in surgery? The answer is clear: Our world is changing rapidly and becoming more complex. Surgeons are faced with new ethical, regulatory, and political challenges for which our background and training provide little preparation. Our clinical work and research are becoming industrialized; powerful new technologies demand our attention; clinical trial oversight is overloaded in the United States and several other developed countries; more trials are migrating to the developing world; human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency disease are ravaging sub-Saharan Africa and spreading throughout the world. …