Showing posts with label Medical Ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medical Ethics. Show all posts
Monday, July 11
Foreskin Man
San Francisco's political battle over circumcision has produced a new comic book character known as Foreskin Man.
Tuesday, June 21
Monday, May 16
Saturday, May 14
Thursday, March 3
Wednesday, March 2
Chart of the Month: Healthcare Bang (or lackthereof) for the Buck
This one is so outrageous that it deserves more heft than the usual Chart of the Day, or Week title.
In fact I almost dubbed it Chart of the Year, but to be prudent I wanted to to wait a little a longer to see how this chart plays out.
Education Site: Those interested in careers in healthcare and healthcare reform, might be interested in Guide to Online Schools degree and certificate programs in the medical field.
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| (click to enlarge) |
In fact I almost dubbed it Chart of the Year, but to be prudent I wanted to to wait a little a longer to see how this chart plays out.
Education Site: Those interested in careers in healthcare and healthcare reform, might be interested in Guide to Online Schools degree and certificate programs in the medical field.
Sunday, February 27
Podcast: The Immortalization Commission - Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death
Link to podcast here.
During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century science became the vehicle for an assault on death. The power of knowledge was summoned to free humans of their mortality. Science was used against science and became a channel for faith.
John Gray is most recently the acclaimed author of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, and Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. Having been Professor of Politics at Oxford, Visiting Professor at Harvard and Yale and Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, he now writes full time. His selected writings, Gray’s Anatomy, were published by Penguin in 2009. The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death is published in February 2011.
During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century science became the vehicle for an assault on death. The power of knowledge was summoned to free humans of their mortality. Science was used against science and became a channel for faith.
John Gray is most recently the acclaimed author of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, and Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. Having been Professor of Politics at Oxford, Visiting Professor at Harvard and Yale and Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, he now writes full time. His selected writings, Gray’s Anatomy, were published by Penguin in 2009. The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death is published in February 2011.
Saturday, February 12
2045: The Year Science Makes Humans Immortal?
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| Ray Kurzweil |
A good read published in Time yesterday on this topic, and radical life-extension, featuring inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, Cambridge Professor Aubrey de Grey, investor Peter Thiel, and others at the forefront of this (for lack of a better term) movement.
From the article:
The more you read about the Singularity, the more you start to see it peeking out at you, coyly, from unexpected directions. Five years ago we didn't have 600 million humans carrying out their social lives over a single electronic network. Now we have Facebook. Five years ago you didn't see people double-checking what they were saying and where they were going, even as they were saying it and going there, using handheld network-enabled digital prosthetics. Now we have iPhones. Is it an unimaginable step to take the iPhones out of our hands and put them into our skulls?
Already 30,000 patients with Parkinson's disease have neural implants. Google is experimenting with computers that can drive cars. There are more than 2,000 robots fighting in Afghanistan alongside the human troops. This month a game show will once again figure in the history of artificial intelligence, but this time the computer will be the guest: an IBM super-computer nicknamed Watson will compete on Jeopardy! Watson runs on 90 servers and takes up an entire room, and in a practice match in January it finished ahead of two former champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. It got every question it answered right, but much more important, it didn't need help understanding the questions (or, strictly speaking, the answers), which were phrased in plain English.
The idea of the Singularity first hit me like a lightning bolt a little over a decade ago when I read Sun Microsystem co-founder Bill Joy's alarming Wired article titled Why the Future Doesn't Need Us. I've been fascinated and trying to wrap my mind around the many potential implications of exponential technological development and living indefinitely ever since.
The Antithesis of Idle Chitchat
If you're looking for a way to spice up your next dinner party or bar conversation then I encourage you to trot out the idea of science making immortality a reality within your lifetime.
As noted by Kurzweil, people can more easily accept the idea of superhuman HAL-like computer artificial intelligence in the foreseeable future than banishing death. Based on limited anecdotal observations women in particular seem to have an almost viscerally negative, knee-jerk response when first confronted with the notion that the necessary technological advances could arrive in their lifetime.
In fact I have yet to encounter a single woman that responds positively at first blush to the idea of living forever. Perhaps the only thing this reveals is a homogeneity amongst my circle of female friends and acquaintances. But it has led me to wonder whether there is something fundamental to radical life extension which makes it more appealing to men?
Personally, I don't think so. Rather I think this is a case of a big, hard to fathom idea traumatically upending the perceived natural order of life's apple cart. Once you get passed initial concerns over things like quality of life (living long but as a gimp or vegetable) or what this means for romance (and concepts like soul mates) then some women soften up their initial distaste for life extension.
I for one love the idea of extending life indefinitely! There is so much I would love to learn, see, and do; to one day catch a sunrise on planet Mars and then climb Olympus Mons, a mountain almost three times as tall as Everest!
So far as I can imagine there is simply nothing else which would more profoundly alter life as we know it than the Singularity and radical life extension. However, their prospect raises tectonic moral, philosophical, socioeconomic, and security implications. Joy's concerns, which are shared by Kurzweil, must be addressed.
The Antithesis of Idle Chitchat
If you're looking for a way to spice up your next dinner party or bar conversation then I encourage you to trot out the idea of science making immortality a reality within your lifetime.
As noted by Kurzweil, people can more easily accept the idea of superhuman HAL-like computer artificial intelligence in the foreseeable future than banishing death. Based on limited anecdotal observations women in particular seem to have an almost viscerally negative, knee-jerk response when first confronted with the notion that the necessary technological advances could arrive in their lifetime.
In fact I have yet to encounter a single woman that responds positively at first blush to the idea of living forever. Perhaps the only thing this reveals is a homogeneity amongst my circle of female friends and acquaintances. But it has led me to wonder whether there is something fundamental to radical life extension which makes it more appealing to men?
Personally, I don't think so. Rather I think this is a case of a big, hard to fathom idea traumatically upending the perceived natural order of life's apple cart. Once you get passed initial concerns over things like quality of life (living long but as a gimp or vegetable) or what this means for romance (and concepts like soul mates) then some women soften up their initial distaste for life extension.
I for one love the idea of extending life indefinitely! There is so much I would love to learn, see, and do; to one day catch a sunrise on planet Mars and then climb Olympus Mons, a mountain almost three times as tall as Everest!
So far as I can imagine there is simply nothing else which would more profoundly alter life as we know it than the Singularity and radical life extension. However, their prospect raises tectonic moral, philosophical, socioeconomic, and security implications. Joy's concerns, which are shared by Kurzweil, must be addressed.
Below is a video of a 17-year old Kurzweil during his 1965 television appearance on I've Got a Secret, and here is a link to his most recent television interview on Charlie Rose where he describes the Singularity.
Thursday, November 11
When to Pull the Plug
Is there another subject that is both more complex and deeply personal than medical ethics?
Seven years ago this subject came up in a conversation with World Business Academy Founder and President, Rinaldo Brutoco. In the dictionary next to the world 'polymath' there should be a picture of Rinaldo.
Rinaldo and I were going over a speaking circuit checklist, discussing the subjects he felt qualified to lecture on. It was a long, diversified list, and he confidently checked every box except one: medical ethics.
Realizing that this was a topic that not only stumped Rinaldo, but also left him uncomfortable or unable to defer to another expert, I promptly tabled further contemplation of the subject. For me, the topic reemerged during the recent health care reform debate when rumors of "death panels" began circulating about.
Below is a preview from the highly regarded PBS program Frontline, which will be profiling medical ethics in an upcoming program.
Here is the press release from the show:
Seven years ago this subject came up in a conversation with World Business Academy Founder and President, Rinaldo Brutoco. In the dictionary next to the world 'polymath' there should be a picture of Rinaldo.
Rinaldo and I were going over a speaking circuit checklist, discussing the subjects he felt qualified to lecture on. It was a long, diversified list, and he confidently checked every box except one: medical ethics.
Realizing that this was a topic that not only stumped Rinaldo, but also left him uncomfortable or unable to defer to another expert, I promptly tabled further contemplation of the subject. For me, the topic reemerged during the recent health care reform debate when rumors of "death panels" began circulating about.
Below is a preview from the highly regarded PBS program Frontline, which will be profiling medical ethics in an upcoming program.
Watch Facing Death on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
Here is the press release from the show:
"How far would you go to sustain the life of someone you love, or your own? When the moment comes, and you’re confronted with the prospect of “pulling the plug,” do you know how you’ll respond? Unfounded rumors of federal “death panels” grabbed headlines last summer, but the real decisions of how we die -- the questions that most of us prefer to put off -- are being made quietly behind closed doors, increasingly on the floors of America’s intensive care units. In this film, FRONTLINE gains access to the ICU of one of New York's biggest hospitals to examine the complicated reality of today’s modern, medicalized death. Here we find doctors and nurses struggling to guide families through the maze of end-of-life choices they now confront: whether to pull feeding and breathing tubes, when to perform expensive surgeries and therapies or to call for hospice. The film also offers an unusually intimate portrait of patients facing the prospect of dying in ways that they might never have wanted or imagined."Venturing into a discussion of medical ethics often becomes deeply emotional. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the gap between the intellectual disciplines, such as economics, medicine and philosophy, which have attempted to provide insights into medical ethics, and our humanity.
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