… “Evidence suggests that legalized PAS will result in a greater number of suicides more generally (and not simply amongst the population who opt for legalized PAS). We will have great difficulty, on the one hand, giving our and medicine’s approval to suicide as the solution to complex problems at the end of life while, […]
the vicious cycle of suicide … Read More »
Imperative 1 To serve selflessly our dying brothers and sisters who come into our care. Whatever material success we doctors have achieved is not of our own design. Society has valued our services and agreed to compensate us well for our efforts on its behalf. Have we lived up to our end of the bargain?
selfless service … Read More »
Imperative 2 To meet the real needs of the dying. What dying patients need first and foremost is a safe environment. They need to know that our care for them is not contingent upon something they do or do not do. They need to know that we care about them as persons worthy of dignity
safe … accompany … presence … Read More »
Rebecca Skloot is a science writer, and to sample the critical acclaim for her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, you would conclude that her book is all science—that and bioethics and the not-insubstantial question, In the billion-dollar industry that is biomedical research, who owns our cells? With a subplot about race relations thrown in
lives transformed by the desire for truth … Read More »
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road;
“… At the time of our founding, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “Almighty God hath created the mind free. … All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens … are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.” He also wrote that the “moral duties which exist between individual and individual
conscience protection & the American experience … Read More »
“Conscience—there are two ways of regarding conscience; one as a mere sort of sense of propriety, a taste teaching us to do this or that, the other as the echo of God’s voice. Now all depends on this distinction—the first way is not of faith, and the second is of faith”. Geissler Conscience and Truth in the writings
Newman on Conscience … Read More »
John Garvey’s open letter on the Institute of Medicine’s health care proposals. Steve Schneck and Michael Sean Winters on the inadequacy of HHS’s conscience protections. Robert George’s comments to ACOG would also be pertinent to the recent IOM report resulting in HHS’s new rule re mandated coverage. “The key thing to see is that the issues in dispute
Religious Liberty and Conscience Protection … Read More »
“Liberalism and illuminism want to insinuate us in a world without fear; they promise to do away with every type of fear. They wish to eliminate every dependency on another and its intimate tension. This search for security is founded on a total auto-affirmation of the self which denies the risk of going out of
a world without fear … ? Read More »
Marcia Angell summarizes the ‘medicalization’ of psychiatry and its support by the pharmaceutical industry. There are many lessons here for palliative care as both a discipline and in its practice. “In short, a powerful quartet of voices came together during the 1980’s eager to inform the public that mental disorders were brain diseases. Pharmaceutical companies
the illusions of psychiatry … Read More »
