Since March 2020, we have been bombarded each day with an overload of statistics. Charts, graphs, scattergrams of cases, positives versus positivity rates, deaths, and whatever else can be produced on a colorful whiteboard have been flashed on screens of…
I told myself that writing anything related to Covid is essentially repeating what has already been put into print. So, here I am doing both--a short note from me and a well written opinion by @stephenpollard. During these months, I…
The Hastings Center is the oldest independent, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary research institute of its kind in the world. The author’s approach regarding our responsibility in a pandemic is frequently referenced as the “fair Innings” argument. Elders have had more “innings” in…
The news media are not the best source for scholarly thinking around the allocation of scarce resources. Hyper-ventilating commentators who trigger hysteria about rationing do not allow for a productive discussion that helps the general public understand how healthcare professionals…
Rather than writing about how we have confronted the issues of medical triage and rationing in our lifetime, I thought it would be meaningful to reprint a 2016 New York Times article that coalesced the various responses from the lay…
Craig Klugman, Ph.D., professor of bioethics and health humanities at DePaul University, recently published the following definition of triage. Triage is a process for determining which patients will receive limited resources in a time of scarcity. The patients who are…
There are more than 250,000 people in the U.S. at the end stages of heart failure. Of those about 15% are in critical need of a heart transplant. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) tightly regulates organ transplant…
I have always authored and posted my own essays but this one by Ezekiel Emanuel strikes home for so many of us who have experienced the loss of the process at the end of life...so I am sharing with all…
Medical ethics deals with choices made by clinicians and patients and the duties and obligations that follow. Central to medical ethics is informed consent and patient autonomy, i.e., the right to make decisions over one’s own body. As of this…
Baby boomers want to change the death experience. An overwhelming 80% of Americans want to die at home but the reality is that 60% die in the hospital and another 20% die in a nursing home. Many times, this shift…