Syed Alam

Infertility specialists may be confronted with the ethical dilemma of whether to disclose misattributed paternity (MP). Physicians should be prepared for instances when an assumed father’s evaluation reveals a condition known for lifelong infertility, for example, congenital bilateral absence of vas deferens (CBAVD). When there is doubt regarding a patient’s comprehension of his diagnosis, physicians must consider whether further disclosure is warranted. This article describes a case of MP with ethics analysis that concludes that limited nondisclosure is most consistent with a physician’s principled duties to inform, to respect patients’ autonomy, and to employ nonmaleficence (including the avoidance of psychosocial harms).

While a corporate ethics program is expected to reduce employees’ unethical behavior, understanding the effects of the ethics program elements on reducing the unethical behavior is a crucial issue. This study aims to explore how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements, including punishment, monitoring, internal reporting, code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training, influence employees’ threat appraisal process, coping appraisal process and unethical behavior at workplaces. The data to verify proposed research hypotheses were collected by administering questionnaire survey on four autonomous government organizations in Bangladesh. Research findings show that only punishment and monitoring have significantly negative relationships with unethical behavior. Monitoring and internal reporting have significantly positive relationships with threat appraisal. The code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training are associated positively with coping appraisal. The mediation results reveal that coping appraisal mediates the relationship between ethics program elements and unethical behavior; but the mediation effects of threat appraisal are not significant. This study provides valuable insights into how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements reduces employees’ unethical behavior as well as how employees’ threat and coping appraisal processes are related to the corporate ethics program and unethical behavior in organizations.

PURPOSE. To investigate the use of high-resolution Fourierdomain optical coherence tomography to image choroidal neovascular membranes associated with exudative age-related macular degeneration. METHODS. An Fd-OCT instrument with axial resolution of 4 to 4.5 μm and transverse resolution of 10 to 15 μm was used to image 21 eyes with newly diagnosed eAMD. A raster series of 100 B-scans separated by 60 μm was used to study the growth pattern of CNVM and associated morphologic changes. CNVM size was determined using 250 to 300 serial virtual C-scans of reconstructed three-dimensional macular volume. RESULTS. A highly reflective subretinal and/or subretinal pigment epithelial lesion that co-localized with the CNVM seen on fluorescein angiography was detected in all eyes by Fd-OCT. Although a combined subretinal and sub-RPE growth pattern of various degrees was noted in 15 eyes, a statistically significant difference in the distribution of growth pattern was noted when classic CNVM was compared with occult CNVM. CONCLUSIONS. Fd-OCT is a promising potential alternative modality to visualize CNVM with AMD. Angiographic lesion size and type correlated with growth pattern and size of CNVM on Fd-OCT, with correlation being stronger for classic lesions. © Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.