The Right Kind of Love Between Doctors and Patients

Yesterday I attended a remarkable educational session at the Brigham & Women's Hospital - "Love Stories: Deconstructing and Lea...

From Faith to Atheism

What would you think was being talked about if you read the following: "I got to come out...It used to terrify me, what people's re...

Religious Ethics and Medical Ethics

The Jewish New Year - Rosh Hashanah – starts this evening, and the New York Times featured a front page article on “Bar Mitzvahs Get a New...

Suing your children in Singapore

In the post I wrote yesterday I referred to the tradition of filial piety in Singapore. When I was discussing that topic with a lawyer at th...

Praying for health

When I learned last week that a friend, who is also a colleague I admire, is having major surgery today, I included this sentence in the not...

Wartime Heroism and Personal Ideals

I'm sorry I never met Dr. Tina Strobos, whose obituary I read in this morning's Boston Globe. But I have a new hero. Dr. Strobos wa...

Sister Margaret McBride Speaks Out

Fundamentalist certainty is an understandable, but dangerous, stance in a world that William James famously described as a "one great b...

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...

Medical Ethicists as Secular Priests

In Jonathan Moreno's book " Is There an Ethicist in the House? " I came upon these sentences: ...I have been appointed to ad h...

Should a Convicted Rapist be Allowed to Practice Medicine?

In 2008, a military court convicted Dr. Mark Seldes, a Flight Surgeon serving in South Korea, for raping a civilian colleague. Dr. Seldes se...

Atheists in Foxholes

The old saw - "there are no atheists in foxholes" - is a lie. If you need proof, visit the Military Association of Atheists and Fr...

Serving God in our Patients

In 2009 I had the privilege of spending two days at the Swami Vivekananda Hospital in Saragur, India. (See here for a post about my visit.)...

Nicholas Kristof on "Tussling Over Jesus"

Readers who have followed the controversy within the Catholic Church over the abortion done at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix to save ...

Sacred Moments in Medical Care

This month's issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry has a fascinating clinical discussion - "Perspectives on 'Sacred Momen...

Catholic Social Vision and the Diocese of Phoenix

With regard to the abortion done for a patient who was 11 weeks pregnant and on a rapid trajectory towards death from pulmonary hypertension...

The Wall Street Journal Weighs In about St. Joseph's Hospital

I've been following the controversy between Bishop Olmsted of the Phoenix Diocese and St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix and its paren...

In Praise of St. Joseph's Hospital and the Sisters of Mercy

Although I believe that Bishop Olmsted was wrong from the perspectives of both secular and Catholic medical ethics when he decreed that St. ...

A Worthy Conflict about Abortion in Arizona

The level of public debate about health care ethics has been in a sorry state in recent years, as evidenced by the Kaiser Family Foundation ...