A remarkable experiment raises anew questions about whether brain-death is really death.

There is a lack of clarity about the New York State Task Force guidelines on ventilator allocation. I believe disability rights concerns regarding the recommendations on chronic ventilator users are well-founded. This lack of clarity may cost lives.

As hospitals and public health authorities devise triage protocols to allocate scarce critical-care resources during the Covid-19 pandemic, people with disabilities are expressing alarm that these protocols devalue them and exacerbate long-entrenched ableism in health care. Lawsuits alleging disability discrimination in have been filed in Washington and Alabama. The U.S. Office for Civil Rights is investigating disability discrimination complaints in triage protocols. The challenge is to develop protocols that will minimize discrimination in the health care system.

A New York Times special report on euthanasia of a Paralympics champion in Belgium was ethically problematic for several reasons.

The Kings County Medical Society in New York recently hosted a brunch with New York State legislators. One of the guests was Richard Gottfried, chair of the New York State Assembly Health Committee, who is cosponsoring A2694, a bill legalizing medical aid in dying (MAID). As a medical oncologist with 30 years’ experience treating seriously ill patients, I have concerns about it, and I expressed them to Gottfried.

Kathy Brandt, a leader in the hospice and palliative care movement in the United States, died on August 4. She was 53 and had been diagnosed with a rare, highly aggressive form of ovarian cancer in January. Brandt and her wife regularly posted on social media about their family's end-of-life experiences.

Should religion play a role in a doctor's care of seriously ill patients? The author, a hematologist/oncologist who teaches Jewish medical ethics, writes: "A physician's outlook may be shaped by religious standards without having to impose it on the patient."

Should an elderly person in decent health but "tired of life" be able to die with a physician's assistance? The Netherlands is grappling with this question.

“Improving patient experience” has become the mantra of many health care facilities in a highly competitive and regulated environment. But just what is it about the patient experience that needs...

Four articles in the Hastings Center Report make an array of claims about  whether advance directives should or should not be used to instruct caregivers to withhold oral feeding of...

In “Avoiding Deep Dementia,” an essay in the current issue of the Hastings Center Report, legal scholar Norman Cantor explains why he has an advance directive that calls  for voluntary...

Twice upon a time, there was a girl who died. The death certificate that New Jersey issued to 17-year-old Jahi McMath on June 22 was the second one issued for...

Dying cannot be understood properly, or responded to well, without recourse to the connections between the dying experience and the larger social structures that make up a social and civic...

In an earlier piece, “Trumping Drug Costs,” I looked at out-of-pocket costs as the pivotal issue with drugs. They can be a particularly heavy burden on the elderly, taking money...

It’s a little-known and rarely discussed fact of medical practice that doctors value the ability to love our patients. If the thought of doctors loving patients makes you queasy, be...

Last month, Hawaii became the seventh state, with the District of Columbia, to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Similar to some of the other state laws, Hawaii’s Our Care, Our Choice Act...

The death of former first lady Barbara Bush at age 92 was noteworthy in many ways. She was by all accounts smart, sharp and funny, and a fine, helpful wife...

While the U.S. system of organ donation and transplantation is in a state of growth for the fifth year in a row, the call for new strategies to accelerate that...

I have been opposed to physician-assisted death for well over 30 years. I need to go back to my early days with this issue to lay out some of my...

Little noticed in the United States but a big deal in France, President Emmanuel Macron announced in January that he is creating a bioethics commission to review the country’s policies...

“Death with dignity” for the past 40 years has meant, for many people, avoiding unwanted medical technology and dying in a hospital.  A “natural” death at home or in a...

Reading “After DNR: Surrogates who persist in requesting cardiopulmonary resuscitation” in the Hastings Center Report, I was reminded of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s chastisement of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s opposition...

Death is beginning to show its age, though I hesitate to even mention that possibility.  With an obviously big ego and its intimidating black cloak and scythe, it has always...

An old woman desperately needs medical attention. Yet she fiercely refuses every offer of help from friends, neighbors, and the local doctor. No one will get past her door, she...

Ms. Rita, whom I met as a volunteer at a local nursing home, was the most ardent lover of grapes I have ever known. She was confined to a wheelchair...

Sometime around my mid-50’s I began to ask myself a question: how long should I want to live? My father had died at 64, my mother at 85, my various...

A new chapter in efforts to secure legal provisions for physician-assisted dying began last week when the California State Legislature voted to approve the End of Life Option Act. If Governor Jerry...

We science-medicine-poetry junkies, along with a sizeable portion of the world’s population, are mourning the death of Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and author who died last Sunday from metastasized melanoma. And as...

I spent last week in Singapore, where an excellent breakfast of noodles and teah o ais limau (Malaysian-style iced tea with lemon) costs about $2 and is served at an open-air hawker...

Having read with interest Josephine Johnston’s essay on the aid-in-dying case before a court in New Zealand, I’d like to elaborate on some salient points. I have been actively involved with...

A 78-­year­‐old Iowa man, Henry Rayhons, has been charged with third­‐degree felony sexual abuse for having sex with his wife, who had severe Alzheimer’s, in her nursing home on May 23,...

Time is running out on fixing the way we die. As readers of this blog know, the courts first declared a right to refuse unwanted life-sustaining treatment in the 1976 Quinlan case....

In her New York Times article of January 20, “Complexities of Choosing an End Game for Dementia”, Paula Span reviewed the use of advance directives to withhold food and water as a way...

Brittany Maynard, the courageous 29-year-old woman with terminal brain cancer, ended her life a month ago today. She and her husband had moved to Oregon so that Maynard could take advantage...

Death is hard to deal with anywhere, but France has some contradictory ways of providing end-of-life care, as two recent articles discuss. On the lighter side, Agence France-Presse reports on...

Recently, I spoke with a seasoned health care reporter who was interested in Alzheimer’s and biomarkers because of his own family’s history of this disease. He started by asking, “Why...

I recently gave a talk about Alzheimer’s disease and asked people to imagine two individuals, Manny and Sue. Manny died at 85; he was showing signs of age but living...

Two cases involving “brain death” have received considerable public attention, including commentary by several well-known bioethicists. In commenting on these cases the bioethicists have stated, in no uncertain terms, that...

Brain death is an immensely challenging concept to grasp, even for health care providers. The patients look like any other patient in the intensive care unit; they have vital signs,...

Family Lose Right-to-Life Case at U.K.’s Highest Court.” “Judges ‘Right’ to Allow Man to Die.” “Widow Loses ‘Withdrawn Treatment’ Case.” These were the headlines on a recent Supreme Court decision...

 There is a saying in ethics: you can’t get an “ought” from an “is.” Descriptions of the world as it is do not reveal truths about the world as it...

My sister called: “Get the orange card out of my wallet on the table. We need to call the study people.” In July, we got the news – Dad’s colon...

The problems with end-of-life care are clear enough. Patients and their families/significant others still have trouble talking with one another and their doctors about how they would and would not...

Armond and Dorothy Rudolph of New Mexico were evicted from their assisted living facility in January 2011, after administrators called the police and rescue workers and informed them the couple,...

Goldilocks, all grown up and working as a Medicare hospice auditor, checks the records of three patients.  She frowns at Mr. Brown Bear’s record.  He was referred to hospice three...

Belgian twins, Eddie and Marc Verbessem, were euthanized by lethal injection at Brussels University Hospital in Jette in December. The Verbessem brothers, deaf since birth, were cobblers by trade who lived and...

For some years I have been writing about end-of-life care and, of late, focusing on the high costs of that care. I recently had a painful but revealing insight into...

On February 5, Lisa Krieger, a science and medicine writer for the Mercury News in San Jose, Ca, published a remarkably moving and insightful article about the protracted dying of her 88-year-old father. Suffering...