When Docs Play Deities
by George WeigelWhen doctors imagine themselves deities who de facto know “what’s best” in difficult neo-natal cases, then the ethics of the ancient Hippocratic Oath seem to crumble. Continue Reading »
My Father’s Living Will
by Viva HammerIt is a haze of fog and low cloud at dawn and the kookaburras are wild with ecstasy. The soft low click of the neighbors’ gate breaks in among the birdsong: opening, closing, opening. They are leaving early for the long weekend of midsummer. In the room next to mine, a man is retching, heaving, . . . . Continue Reading »
The Dark Side of “Miracle Drugs”
by Peter TonguetteThe normalization of chemical substances may seem like a phenomenon peculiar to our postmodern moment, but a movie made nearly seventy years ago sounded the alarm before many of us were even born. Continue Reading »
Sharp Compassion
by Nathan M. AntielAnna DeForest’s novel is an aesthetic achievement, and it suggests how medicine might be humanized or “restored through instruction” once more. Continue Reading »
Medicating the Masses
by Adrian GatyConform or be drugged. We used to make dystopian movies about it; now we make our children live it. Continue Reading »
How Abortionists Dispose of Their Victims
by Catherine Glenn FosterAre we going to treat the bodies of humans with the basic dignity they were denied in life, or are we going to treat them like trash? We must confront, rather than avoid, the grim realities of the abortion industry in its totality. Continue Reading »
Mutilating Our Bodies
by Bethel McGrewWhile adults who regret their sex changes may themselves tend to libertarianism, their stories testify to a hidden horror: vulnerable, disturbed individuals of all ages hastily ushered into procedures that are nothing short of medical malpractice. Justice demands a reckoning in the form of penalties and strictures. Continue Reading »
Denying and Defying our Human Bodies
by Jennifer LahlMedical procedures that would have been unconscionable fifty years ago are happening all around us. The medical profession may never recover from its complicity in the mutilation of young people. Continue Reading »
The Politics of Unhappiness
by Ronald W. DworkinA traffic jam, a shoe that pinches: It takes very little to ruin a nice day. Nothing can please you then, and your judgment is affected. At first glance, unpleasantness and the resulting peevishness have no political or economic significance. These experiences are commonplace, part of the . . . . Continue Reading »
The Fall of Dr. Raoult
by Theodore DalrympleNothing stimulates the emergence of a guru like a crisis, especially one to which the correct response is far from clear. People want simple, reassuring answers. They eagerly suspend their critical faculties; their wishes are father to their beliefs. A good guru can transform the proudest skeptic . . . . Continue Reading »
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