Daniel Callahan
Posts by Daniel Callahan
- Bioethics Forum Essay
The Hastings Center at 50: Looking Back and Ahead
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A Single-Payer Bubble?
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayIn 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 from their savings and a large bite of their Social Security income. Along the way, I also looked at out-of-pocket medi...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Palliative Care vs. Cancer Research
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayThe 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 to one president and mother to another. Her death last week after a long illness, with her husband at her side, was a model of palliative care su...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
The Climate Agreement: Understanding, and Leveraging, Public Opinion
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Aging
Read the PostFrom Bioethics BriefingsFraming the Issue The aging of modern societies–a striking fruit of medical advances and improved economic and living standards–is one of the most important global challenges, affecting rich and poor countries alike. Most people in developed countries live long lives and die slowly of chronic dis...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
The Good of the Body
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayThe December 2015 United Nations meeting on climate change was an historic moment for global efforts to reduce harmful carbon emissions. While it gained the agreement about the future good of the planet, it made clear that there is a long and hard road still ahead. Yet another global challenge is ...Read the Post - From Bioethics Briefings
Health Care Costs and Medical Technology
Read the PostFrom Bioethics BriefingsFraming the Issue Almost everyone knows that this country has a scandalously large number of people who lack health insurance, now up to 46 million and growing. That number is vivid and evocative. But it has overshadowed another, more serious issue—that of the steady escalation of health care costs...Read the Post - From Bioethics Briefings
Bioethics and Policy—A History
Read the PostFrom Bioethics BriefingsThe word “ethics” makes many people nervous. It can connote religious or ideological dogmatism, hard-nosed rules about right and wrong. Or it can mean an endless quest to determine just what is right or wrong, a quest burdened by 2,500 years of disagreement. Yet whatever one perceives ethics ...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
The Death of a Pet: A Glimpse into the Human Future
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayFor 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 what the future might look like on both costs and decision-making. It came about from an unexpected angle of vision, the care provi...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
The Trial of “Death by Medicine”: An Interview with Lisa Krieger
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayOn 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 from advanced dementia he contracted septicemia, was admitted to the ICU of the Sta...Read the Post