Learning about Aging from Patients and their Children

Last month I wrote  about how 13 years after the death of Emily Lublin, a patient with whom I'd had a very warm and constructive relatio...

Contact with Families after a Patient's Death

On April 28 I wrote a post to report that the New York Times E thicist column had taken a quote about doctor-patient sex from this site. T...

The Bias Towards Drugs in Treating Depressed Older Patients

I recently read an article on " How to adapt cognitive-behavioral therapy for older adults " that came to me in Current Psychiatry...

More about the Massachusetts "Death with Dignity" Act

Last week I wrote  about the Massachusetts "Death with Dignity" ballot initiative. For those who are interested in the initiative ...

Massachusetts Death with Dignity Ballot Initiative

My home state of Massachusetts has an initiative on the November ballot that would establish a "death with dignity" law closely m...

Death by bedsores

The September 15 issue of The Lancet has a fascinating article  by Arthur Caplan, who is now at the Division of Medical Ethics at New York ...

Check out this new blog

I've been working for a few months with Dan Callahan, Shep Nuland, and Mary Crowley of the Hastings Center to develop a new blog. It...

Old against young in Japan

If you read about a country with economic problems where "already indecisive leaders [are] loath to upset retirees from the baby boom w...

Who's taking care of Mom?

The July Journal of the American Geriatric Society has a disturbing article - " Hiring and Screening Practices of Agencies Supplying Pa...

Sexual Intimacy in the Nursing Home

The most recent issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics has an excellent article from the Centre for Evidence-Based Aged Care in Australia - ...

Euthanasia and suicide

On March 29 Charles Snelling killed Adrienne, his wife of 61 years (the mode of her death has not been publicly revealed) and then shot hims...

Public Altruism about Health Care is Alive and Well

Four days ago I discussed Medicare beneficiaries who think about Medicare in terms of future generations and the common good, not just in t...

Do Medicare Beneficiaries Only Think About Themselves?

This week I spoke with a friend about my conviction that U.S. political process needs a voice from Medicare beneficiaries advocating for a p...

AARP's Misguided Medicare Advocacy

AARP has produced a strong television advertisement threatening any legislator who considers cuts to Medicare. The ad shows an army of fol...

Going to heaven with our stitches in

A team at the Harvard School of Public Health published a disturbing article in Lancet this week on "The intensity and variation of su...

The Dignity of Risk

I often write posts about an article in the morning newspaper or a just published medical journal. This post is about an article written in ...

Altruism in Japan - Seniors Volunteer for Nuclear Cleanup

My friend and colleague Steve Moffic , who, like me, thinks of health care in the light of ethics and the religious impulse, told me about a...

"Still Alice" and the Ethics of Dementia

Several friends had urged me to read " Still Alice ," a novel by Lisa Genova about a 50 year old Harvard professor and mother of t...

Improving Nursing Home Ethics

A recent conversation with a friend about his father's nursing home experience taught an important lesson about nursing home ethics. Her...

Medicare Policy Needs Viagra

This post is about policy dysfunction, not erectile dysfunction. Medicare reform is so complicated that it's easy to get lost in arcane ...