A leading disabilities group in Britain has revealed a shocking rise in GPs and hospital staff issuing ‘do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation’ (DNACPR) forms for people with disabilities during the Covid-19 crisis – without consulting patients or their families. Their investigation shows that patients who had disabilities had ‘do not resuscitate’ forms issued for ‘blindness’ and even […]
I have written elsewhere about how the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in dangerous and unethical responses like ventilator rationing, unilateral DNRs, and some states ordering nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to accept coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals. But the Covid-19 crisis has also spawned new ideas such as the American Clinicians Academy On Medical Aid in Dying’s policy […]
Like many others, I’ve been thinking about the recent race-related protests and riots. I definitely don’t have all the answers. Nevertheless, here are a few of my philosophical reflections, which I hope will be helpful. 1. I think a distinction should be made between (1) black lives matter (the claim) and (2) Black Lives Matter (the […]
The past two weeks have been been one astonishing exhibit of post-modernist tropes after another Somebody ought to frame the last two weeks of American life and exhibit them on a wall in the Museum of Post-Modern Landmarks. Ever since the appalling death of George Floyd on May 25, it has been one astonishing post-modernist […]
On Tuesday last week hundreds of thousands of people witnessed an elderly black gentleman bleed to death on a St. Louis sidewalk. David Dorn, who was buried yesterday, was a 77 year old retired police captain who was shot in the chest by a looter whom he interrupted stealing a television from a pawn shop. Dorn, […]
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There’s more than enough police brutality in Kenya ‘Sizeable’, according to the Concise Oxford dictionary, means ‘of large size’ — several hundred people perhaps. Not according to the photo or the news story on the back page of the Kenyan Daily Nation the following day — even allowing for social distancing — which just mentioned […]
When it comes to denouncing Christian persecution in the modern world, the Irish government speaks in whispers. This is all the more upsetting when you consider how radical and how vocal it is willing to be when it comes to a range of other issues linked to human right violations. Recently, our entire national discourse […]
Increasingly, anecdotal reports and research are linking gender dysphoria with Asperger’s syndrome. The Australian recently featured a leading expert who wants an inquiry into the disproportionate number of teenagers with autism in gender clinics. Professor Tony Attwood, a psychologist and author of a number of books on autism, is not opposed to gender change as such. But […]
This day 103 years ago – 8 June 1917 – an explosion in a copper mine in Butte, Montana, resulted in the death of 168 miners. 38 of them were from Ireland, by far the largest group of foreign-born workers. The fire in the Speculator Granite Mountain Mine shocked America and is still the worst […]
I have been out with the protesters, marched with them, prayed with them on street corners, and at what’s left of the heart-wrenching auction block that once “sold” enslaved people in Fredericksburg. I’ve participated in the very moving almost 9 minute silent hand raising demonstration a few times, representing the mind-blowing amount of time that […]
If you can remember that long ago, the only protesters defying Covid-19 lockdowns in the United States were small crowds of roughnecks from flyover country waving flags and brandishing placards at State capitals. Nonetheless, petty incidents like this still outraged bioethicists and public health experts. Writing in PennLive, a Pennsylvania blog, four of them, including the […]