Aaron Rothstein

Fellow

Aaron Rothstein, M.D., is a fellow in the Bioethics, Technology and Human Flourishing Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is a neurovascular physician, neuroepidemiologist, and writer whose work explores the moral, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of medicine, with particular attention to the physician-patient relationship, medical ethics, stroke care, cognitive disorders, and the meaning of illness and healing.

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Aaron Rothstein, M.D., is a fellow in the Bioethics, Technology and Human Flourishing Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is a neurovascular physician, neuroepidemiologist, and writer whose work explores the moral, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of medicine, with particular attention to the physician-patient relationship, medical ethics, stroke care, cognitive disorders, and the meaning of illness and healing.

Dr. Rothstein hosts EPPC’s podcast Searching for Medicine’s Soul, which examines how medicine can better serve human dignity and human flourishing in an age of technological power, institutional pressure, and moral uncertainty. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New Atlantis, Public Discourse, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and National Affairs. From 2014 to 2021, he wrote Practicing Medicine, a blog for The New Atlantis focused on the inner workings of medicine and its theoretical, practical, and ethical complexities.

His academic work focuses on stroke, cognitive outcomes, vascular neurology, and neuroepidemiology. He has published widely in peer-reviewed medical journals, including Stroke, JAMA Neurology, Neurology, JAMA Network Open, and The New England Journal of Medicine, and has served as an investigator or site principal investigator for multiple multicenter studies in vascular neurology.

Dr. Rothstein received his B.A. in History from Yale University and his M.D. from Wake Forest School of Medicine. He completed residency training in neurology at NYU School of Medicine, fellowship training in vascular neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.S. in Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is board-certified in neurology and vascular neurology.

You can follow him on X at @aaronrothstein

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‘Doctored’ Review: Medical Promise Betrayed

Aaron Rothstein

When research into an experimental drug or medical procedure is called into question, the consequences can be devastating.

Articles

Wall Street Journal / January 24, 2025

Origins of the Modern Euthanasia Movement

Aaron Rothstein

As the ink on my medical degree was still drying, I covered a hospital’s oncology service at night, taking care…

Articles

National Affairs / September 1, 2024

Persecution and Israeli Academia

Aaron Rothstein

Many academics, perhaps recognizing the extreme nature of such boycotts, justify them by caricaturing Israeli policies as comparable to Nazism. It is only by such extreme assertions that boycotts can justify themselves.

Articles

The Public Discourse / February 14, 2024

Physician Burnout

Aaron Rothstein

Doctors don’t necessarily need less work to assuage burnout; they need to do more of the vocational work that gives their profession meaning.

Articles

National Affairs / January 1, 2024

‘If I Betray These Words’ Review: First, Do No Harm

Aaron Rothstein

Caught between the oaths they took as medical students and the demands of corporate healthcare, today’s doctors suffer moral injury.

Articles

The Wall Street Journal / April 3, 2023

An Open Letter to HHS Secretary Becerra on Ending the Covid-19 Public Health “Emergency”

Aaron Kheriaty, Aaron Rothstein, Rachel N. Morrison, Roger Severino, Ryan T. Anderson

Human flourishing requires both public health and individual liberty and an appropriate balance between these goods when they conflict. We know that human beings flourish in community; we are social by nature. As such, we should not be surprised that government Covid-19 regulations mandating school closures, lockdowns, masking, and vaccination have isolated us from our fellow citizens and imposed significant attendant harms. It is time to declare this emergency over and once again let people take responsibility for themselves.

Articles, Policy, Resources

Public Discourse / March 18, 2022

Little Data, Big Headlines

Aaron Rothstein

On overinterpreting Covid studies for clicks

Articles

The New Atlantis / September 8, 2021

Covid-19 and the Erosion of Civic Trust

Aaron Rothstein

The American public deserves the truth, even if it is not as favorable or definitive as we would hope. If our policy leaders and scientists cannot put their faith in us with all our faults and shortcomings, why ought we put our faith in them with all their faults and shortcomings?

Articles

Public Discourse / December 15, 2020

Dementia, Dualism, and What Makes Us Human

Aaron Rothstein

In many ways, demented patients present the greatest challenge to the question of what makes us human.

Articles

Public Discourse / June 6, 2019

A Passover in Self-Imposed Exile

Aaron Rothstein

A doctor spends Passover in East Africa, surrounded by disease and suffering, and reflects on the tenuous balance between order and disorder, exodus and return

Articles

Tablet / April 23, 2019

Why the Hippocratic Oath Still Matters

Aaron Rothstein

The Hippocratic Oath offers physicians of any generation guidelines, proscriptions, and prescriptions about how to be a good physician. We may not agree with all of its conclusions, but if we unthinkingly dismiss them, we do so at our own peril.

Articles

Public Discourse / June 11, 2018

Dazzling Dendrites

Aaron Rothstein

The importance of these two discoveries cannot be overstated. Treatments available for seizures, autoimmune diseases, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, and more depend on the synapses between neurons; drugs act on receptors and chemicals in this space.

Articles

The Weekly Standard / March 16, 2018