In this essay, the author investigates the practical ethics of miraculous healings, and proposes a four-step approach for working with parents who, for religious reasons, refuse life-saving treatment for children.

In this essay, the author surveys the concept of therapeutic privilege, and addresses the temptation to respond to biographical questions with biological answers in the context of personal meaning-making.

In this essay, the author explores the meaning of care for the whole person, and underscores the mission of compassion as being willing to meet patients at their suffering point.

An increasingly blurred understanding of the distinctive challenges posed to transplantation medicine and, by extension, public health, by the debilitating reality of alcoholism suggests a critical need to revisit the relationship between causality, candidacy, and culpability in light of substance addiction. This essay grounds its arguments in two, straightforward premises: (i) compassionate medical practice - understood as the sympathetic willingness to enter into the existential suffering of another in order to ameliorate the anguish invoked by disease - rests on the fiduciary relationship shared between provider and patient; and (ii) allocating medical goods according to moral desert rather than existential disposition undermines the fundamental nature of medicine and the functioning of the provider-patient relationship. Drawing from this syllogism, the aim and proposal of this essay posits the argument that employing moral desert as an allocation criteria to inhibit alcoholic patients from equal consideration and treatment is, and ought to remain, at odds with the fundamental nature of medicine and the functioning of the provider-patient relationship.

An increasingly blurred understanding of the ethical significance of global "transplant transactions" - a curious combination of altruism and commerce, consent and coercion, gifts and theft, science and sorcery, care and human sacrifice - suggest a critical need to revisit the fundamental moral normlessness of the trafficking enterprise. This essay grounds its arguments in two, straightforward premises: (i) the ethical principle of respect for human vulnerability is an indispensable measure of the licitness of most, if not all, moral actions; and (ii) human organ trafficking violates the ethical principle of respect for human vulnerability. Drawing from this syllogism, the aim and proposal of this essay posits the argument that human organ trafficking cannot, in most, if not all, cases, be morally justified insofar as it violates the ethical principle of respect for human vulnerability.

In this essay, the author examines the difficult task of determining quality of life for seriously-ill newborns, and highlights the narrative vitalism so often characteristic of those forced to make end-of-life decisions on behalf of those whose lives have just begun.

In this essay, the author analyzes the nature of curing and healing, and offers practical steps for managing families who request medically contraindicated interventions.

In this essay, the author considers the theme of deaths and resurrections in light of uncertain outcomes, and captures the pressure on ethicists to always know “the right thing to do.”

In this essay, the author navigates the terrain of proxy decision making, and uncovers the hidden tendency of some clinicians to reduce quality of life to physical capability.

In this essay, the author evaluates the nature of hope in the chronically ill, and emphasizes the many lessons dying individuals can teach us about living.