“Who Needs Medical Ethics?”

Posted: Thursday, February 1, 2001
Instilling in doctors a strong commitment to do right by their patients hasbeen a concern of the medical profession since antiquity. Indeed, the ancientHippocratic Oath--with its pledge to "come for the benefit of the sick" and torefrain from divulging the confidences of patients or engaging in sexualrelations with them--is still administered, in one form or another, to thegraduates of most medical schools. The American Medical Association also has itsown code of ethics, which dates back more than 150 years and includes, in itsmost updated version, thoughtful guidance on matters like fetal research andend-of-life care.  [Full Story]

Review of Mary Briody Mahowald's Genes, Women, Equality

Posted: Monday, June 5, 2000
Since the advent of the Human Genome Project in 1990, a range of ethicists, geneticists, medical professionals, and commentators have explored the implications of this government-sponsored effort to map and sequence the human genome.  The past decade has also witnessed an increase in explorations of science and scientific methods by feminist theorists.    [Full Story]

Badness or Madness?

Posted: Sunday, August 15, 1999
When neo-Nazi sympathizer Buford O. Furrow Jr. opened fire on a Jewish day school last Tuesday it seemed fairly straightforward: He had committed a hate crime. But when we learned that Furrow had tried to get psychiatric help, he—and his crime—suddenly became more complicated.  [Full Story]

Parity Isn't Charity

Posted: Friday, June 11, 1999
At this week's daylong White House Conference on Mental Health, Tipper Gore called mental illness "the last great stigma of the 20th century." She bemoaned the practice of most insurance companies to give mental conditions less coverage than physical ones. "It's high time our health plans treat all Americans equally," said President Clinton. In insurance circles, the word for treating mental and physical conditions alike is parity. But while it's a worthy goal, the administration's plan for parity is unlikely to work.  [Full Story]

An Overabundance of Counseling?

Posted: Sunday, April 25, 1999
Shortly after the police, paramedics and television crews screeched onto the scene at Columbine High School, the grief counselors arrived. Coming in by the busload, such experts are now a fixture of tragedy's aftermath in America.  [Full Story]

Opiates For the Masses

Posted: Monday, June 8, 1998
One hundred years ago, German chemists introduced heroin to the world. On Saturday the New York Academy of Medicine held a conference celebrating the drug's latest use, "heroin maintenance": medically supervised distribution of pure heroin to addicts. The academy's First International Conference on Heroin Maintenance introduces to our shores the latest example of the pernicious drug-treatment philosophy known as "harm reduction."  [Full Story]

Don't Forget the Addict's Role in Addiction

Posted: Saturday, April 4, 1998
Addiction is not a brain disease. Relapse is not inevitable. From the first installment of Bill Moyers's widely publicized television special, "Addiction: Close to Home," on Sunday night, viewers learned that addiction is a chronic and relapsing brain disease.  [Full Story]