The COVID-19 Pandemic a stress test for clinical medicine and medical ethics, with a confluence over questions of the proportionality of resuscitation. Drawing upon his experience as a clinical ethicist during the surge in New York City during the Spring of 2020, the author considers how attitudes regarding resuscitation have evolved since the inception of do-not-resuscitate orders decades ago. Sharing a personal narrative about a DNR quandry he encountered as a medical intern, the author considers the balance of patient rights (...) versus clinical discretion, warning about the risk of resurgent physician paternalism dressed up in the guise of a public health crisis. (shrink)

Sometimes one’s greatest academic disappointments can have unexpected outcomes. This is especially true when one is trying to change career trajectories or do something that others did not take seriously. My path into neuroethics was an unexpected journey catalyzed in part by constructive disappointment and the disbelief of colleagues who thought that the work I was pursuing nearly two decades prior was a fool’s errand. After all, could anyone—in his or her right mind—ever conceive of waking up a person unconscious (...) from brain injury and getting him to speak?1. (shrink)