Bioethics and American Democracy publication

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.

More patient autonomy means higher demand for quality health care. More data from scientific studies and further efforts within hospitals to promote quality care means patients and physicians can make the right decisions and expect the right outcomes.

With Rorschach results and interview notes in hand, did Kelley and Gilbert solve the enigma of Nazi pathology, or, at least, provide the materials for such a solution? Or, to put the question even more modestly, what did their investigations teach us about what Dimsdale calls “the anatomy of malice”? 

Advocates for “death with dignity” seem to deny reality, since no human death is truly dignified—even if a person chooses or accepts it. Instead, what ultimately gives death dignity is the kind of life that preceded it.

Why skeptics believe what they believe

Despite our ignorance about Solomon and his wisdom, we are drawn to this story of a quintessentially enigmatic human figure, with a life that “mirrors our own strivings and doubts.”

EPPC’s New Atlantis journal celebrates ten years of concentrating on the human side of scientific progress.

Read this article on the Wall Street Journal.

Embracing, not fixing, mental differences