title: Black, white or green: 'race', gender and avatars within the therapeutic space.
abstract: Personal identity is critical to provider--patient interactions. Patients and doctors tend to self-select, ideally forming therapeutic units that maximise the patients' benefit. Recently, however, 'reality' has changed. The internet and virtual worlds such as Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/) allow models of identity and provider--patient interactions that go beyond the limits of mainstream personal identity. In this paper some of the ethical implications of virtual patient--provider interactions, especially those that have to do with personal identity, are explored.
authors: Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa 52242, USA. mark-graber@uiowa.edu
authors: Mark A
authors: MA
authors: Graber
authors: Abraham D
authors: AD
authors: Graber