When Black and White Turns Gray: Navigating the Ethical Challenges of Implementing Shared Infant Feeding Decisions for Persons Living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus in the United States.

In 2023, US guidelines for feeding perinatally human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-exposed infants were revised to encourage collaborative decision-making in lieu of categorical proscription of breastfeeding. This change advances autonomy and health equity for persons living with HIV in the United States, for the first time supporting those who prioritize the maternal and infant benefits of breastfeeding in the setting of effective, well-established HIV risk mitigation. The authors review key moral dilemmas facing clinicians and patients who must navigate the reversal of longstanding dogma against breastfeeding and provide recommendations for implementation of a new ethical paradigm.

Non-Fungible Tokens for Organoids: Decentralized Biobanking to Empower Patients in Biospecimen Research.

Introduction: Scientists use donated biospecimens to create organoids, which are miniature copies of patient tumors that are revolutionizing precision medicine and drug discovery. However, biobanking platforms remove donor identifiers to protect privacy, precluding patients from benefiting from their contributions or sharing information that may be relevant to research outcomes. Decentralized biobanking (de-bi) leverages blockchain technology to empower patient engagement in biospecimen research.

Home Birth in the United States: An Evidence-Based Ethical Analysis.

AbstractThe assumption in current U.S. mainstream medicine is that birthing requires hospitalization.

Perceived Value of Prenatal Ultrasound Screening: A Survey of Pregnant Women.

Introduction: Routine prenatal screening ultrasounds primarily serve to diagnose major fetal anomalies which may prompt further testing and inform clinical decision-making, including possible pregnancy termination. Meanwhile, expectant parents may view the ultrasound experience and information gained differently from their clinicians. In this setting, how to best counsel patients, especially regarding the increasing findings of indeterminant clinical significance, is unclear.

Respect, justice and learning are limited when patients are deidentified data subjects.

Introduction: Critical for advancing a Learning Health System (LHS) in the U.S., a regulatory safe harbor for deidentified data reduces barriers to learning from care at scale while minimizing privacy risks.

Patient caught breastfeeding and instructed to stop: an empirical ethics study on marijuana and lactation.

Background: The US guidelines recommend avoiding marijuana during breastfeeding given concerns about infant's neurodevelopment. In this setting, some physicians and hospitals recommend against or prohibit breastfeeding when marijuana use is detected during pregnancy. However, breastfeeding is beneficial for infants and women, and stigmatization of substance use in pregnancy has been historically linked to punitive approaches with a disproportionate impact on minority populations.

Nonfungible Tokens as a Blockchain Solution to Ethical Challenges for the Secondary Use of Biospecimens: Viewpoint.

Henrietta Lacks' deidentified tissue became HeLa cells (the paradigmatic learning health platform). In this article, we discuss separating research on Ms Lacks' tissue from obligations to promote respect, beneficence, and justice for her as a patient. This case illuminates ethical challenges for the secondary use of biospecimens, which persist in contemporary learning health systems.

Pregnant Individuals' Views on Fetal Tissue Research in the United States.

Objective: Fetal tissue research has driven significant medical advances but remains publicly contentious in the United States. The views of pregnant individuals in the United States regarding the donation of fetal tissue offer an important and previously unexplored perspective on this issue.

Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of data from two separate, broader qualitative studies.

Indeterminate Prenatal Ultrasounds and Maternal Anxiety: A Prospective Cohort Study.

Introduction: Prenatal ultrasounds often yield indeterminate (incomplete or minor abnormality) findings with limited clinical utility. We evaluate impact of indeterminate findings on maternal anxiety.

Methods: A single-U.

Impact of Hospital Visitor Restrictions on Racial Disparities in Obstetrics.

Racial disparities in both obstetrics and COVID-19 are well documented. Troublingly, implicit biases and related testimonial injustice potentiate adverse outcomes for women of color whose voices and concerns have been historically discredited by the medical establishment. In the context of COVID-19, the restriction of hospital visitors for infection prevention and control in a labor and delivery setting may disproportionately burden black women by eliminating or severely limiting access to essential in-person advocacy, which threatens to exacerbate existing disparities in maternal and neonatal outcomes.

A Small-Town Heart.

Melanie presented at twenty weeks of gestation to an obstetrics clinic in a critical access hospital in rural Vermont. She was excited to undergo routine fetal ultrasonography, but her obstetrician gave her grave news: the ultrasound revealed hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a devastating congenital heart defect. Initially, Melanie agreed in general to pursue surgical care for her fetus-a three-stage process that has somewhat uncertain results and could only be done in tertiary care facilities far from her home in Vermont.

HIV-, HBV-, and HCV-Related Information on U.S. Fertility Clinic Websites: A Content Analysis.

People living with human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis B virus, or hepatitis C virus (PLHIV/HBV/HCV) face barriers to assisted reproductive technologies (ART), in part, due to laws and professional regulations mandating dedicated laboratory facilities and storage tanks for reproductive tissue to minimize theoretical risk of cross-contamination. These guidelines greatly increase the expense of providing equal care, however, fertility clinics are neither required to treat nor disclose whether they treat PLHIV/HBV/HCV. Clinics' websites are an important source of information regarding available services for prospective patients and referring providers.

Rethinking "Elective" Procedures for Women's Reproduction during Covid-19.

Common hospital and surgical center responses to the Covid-19 pandemic included curtailing "elective" procedures, which are typically determined based on implications for physical health and survival. However, in the focus solely on physical health and survival, procedures whose main benefits advance components of well-being beyond health, including self-determination, personal security, economic stability, equal respect, and creation of meaningful social relationships, have been disproportionately deprioritized. We describe how female reproduction-related procedures, including abortion, surgical sterilization, reversible contraception devices and in vitro fertilization, have been broadly categorized as "elective," a designation that fails to capture the value of these procedures or their impact on women's overall well-being.

When separation is not the answer: Breastfeeding mothers and infants affected by COVID-19.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has provided detailed guidance on the care of infants of women who are persons under investigation (PUI) or confirmed to have COVID-19. The guidance supports immediate post-partum mother-infant contact and breastfeeding with appropriate respiratory precautions. Although many countries have followed WHO guidance, others have implemented infection prevention and control (IPC) policies that impose varying levels of post-partum separation and discourage or prohibit breastfeeding or provision of expressed breast milk.

Optimizing Medication Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder During COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2).

: The COVID-19 health crisis joined, rather than supplanted, the opioid crisis as the most acutely pressing threats to US public health. In the setting of COVID-19, opioid use disorder treatment paradigms are being disrupted, including the fact that methadone clinics are scrambling to give "take-home" doses where they would typically not. The rapid transition away from in-person examination, dosing and group therapy in an era of social isolation calls for adjustments to clinical practice, including emphasizing patient-provider communication, favoring new inductees on buprenorphine and leveraging technology to optimize safety of medication treatment.

Respect women, promote health and reduce stigma: ethical arguments for universal hepatitis C screening in pregnancy.

In the USA, there are missed opportunities to diagnose hepatitis C virus (HCV) in pregnancy because screening is currently risk-stratified and thus primarily limited to individuals who disclose history of injection drug use or sexually transmitted infection risks. Over the past decade, the opioid epidemic has dramatically increased incidence of HCV and a feasible, well-tolerated cure was introduced. Considering these developments, recent evidence suggests universal HCV screening in pregnancy would be cost-effective and several professional organisations have called for updated national policy.

Women's views about contraception requirements for biomedical research participation.

The scientific and ethical importance of including women of reproductive age in biomedical research is widely acknowledged. Concerns about preventing fetal exposure to research interventions have motivated requirements for contraception among reproductive aged women in biomedical studies-often irrespective of risks and benefits or a woman's actual potential for pregnancy, raising important questions about when such requirements are appropriate. The perspectives of women themselves on these issues are largely unexplored.

Breastfeeding with HIV: An Evidence-Based Case for New Policy.

To help eliminate perinatal HIV transmission, the US Department of Health and Human Services recommends against breastfeeding for women living with HIV, regardless of viral load or combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) status. However, cART radically improves HIV prognosis and virtually eliminates perinatal transmission, and breastfeeding's health benefits are well-established. In this setting, pregnancy is increasing among American women with HIV, and a harm reduction approach to those who breastfeed despite extensive counseling is suggested.