End of Life Care in the News

The State of Aging and End of Life

Health Talk

KMBZ Radio

November 21, 2009

53 minutes 51 seconds

The task of making our medical wishes known during a serious illness or at the end of life is much more complicated now that it’s part of a political debate. John Carney, Vice President of Aging and End of Life at the Center for Practical Bioethics, explains in this edition of Health Talk on KMBZ Radio, Kansas City.

The Cost of Dying
60 Minutes
CBS News
November 22, 2009

Last year, Medicare paid $50 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients' lives. And it has been estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these medical expenditures may have had no meaningful impact.

You might think this would be an obvious thing for Congress and the president to address as they try to reform health care. But what used to be a bipartisan issue has become a politically explosive one.

What's MORAL about mammogram policy?

Rosemary Flanigan

November 20, 2009

There’s value and worth under discussion here—and that value and worth are justified by a utilitarian calculus: balancing harms over benefits. But there is no objective “harm” or “benefit” in utilitarianism. When it comes to mammograms, women in their 40’s might well determine “worth” and “value” differently.

To increase our awareness of how much of our lives are shot through with moral considerations—and how much we should be open to questioning the justification for those judgments or policies or habits that stream along with us—is a hallmark of ethical reflection.

I think of the bundles of institutional “habits” or policies that make up a healthcare organization. We assume that 98% of them can be justified—and we’d never get any work done if we were reviewing them all the time.

But that “ethical component” is integral to the “character” of the entire institution.

The Cultural Politics of Disease

Keith Wailoo is the Director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers University and author of acclaimed books examining the cultural politics of disease in America.

In this edition of The Bioethics Channel, Dr. Wailoo explains the different cultural and clinical responses to diseases like Tay-Sachs and sickle cell anemia.

Link: Podcast, The Cultural Politics of Disease, 10 minutes 24 seconds

Give Me ObamaCare and Give Me Your So-Called "Death Panels." It's Surely Better Than What We Have Now.

A debate between Dr. Summer Johnson, dubbed a "progressive bioethicist" by the conservative Mercatornet, and Nancy Valko, RN of Missouri Nurses for Life, summarizes why the health care reform problem has been so difficult to resolve.

To read Dr. Johnson's post, click here.