Bioethics and American Democracy publication

EPPC Fellow Dr. Aaron Kheriaty details the latest turn in his conflict with the University of California over its vaccine mandate.

The 1905 Supreme Court Case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts is often cited to justify vaccine mandates and other Covid emergency measures. But what did that original case actually determine?

Civility and respect on social media can advance the pursuit of truth more than snark or sarcasm, but this requires patience, nuance, and a willingness to engage directly with our interlocutors. It’s more time consuming and difficult, but it is worthwhile.

Medical exemptions for most vaccine mandates are too narrowly tailored, constraining physicians’ discretionary judgment and impairing individualized patient care. Heavy-handed mandates stigmatize and punish those who refuse to comply. Many aspects of our response to Covid no longer make sense.

On overinterpreting Covid studies for clicks

How did we get to this place in our national discourse on abortion where, instead of arguing about how to…

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?

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

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.

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.

According to the Greeks, philosophy, literature, and history, also known as the humanities, played a role in clarifying those limits. And they forced citizens of Greece to ponder and discuss the question which would bring such clarification: what makes us human?

Bellevue reflects the worst and the best not just of its disadvantaged patients, its physicians, and its students, but of the American democratic project.