Mr. B in Solitary Confinement

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Janet Liljestrand, M.D., M.A. Mr. B was in solitary confinement. His crime? Candida auris, a fungus which is particularly difficult to treat, grew from one of his cultures taken during a fever while a patient in a nursing home. Referred to as an opportunistic infection, the average person is unlikely to become ill with C. auris, but those in poor health or with an immune deficiency are susceptible. The CDC has recommended that a patient who has a culture that is positive for C. auris, regardless of the site of the culture, be in isolation for the duration ...read more

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Can We Deal with the Truth?

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  D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A. Executive Director Two things have happened in recent weeks that should get our attention. Both are truth claims, and come from opposite ends of the cultural and political spectra. First of all, what is truth? The Free Dictionary is helpful: truth is defined as “Conformity to fact or actuality.” That which conforms to reality is truth. An example often bandied about is my action based on what I believe about gravity. That is, if I believe that the gravitational pull of the earth does not exist (is not true), then I should ...read more

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Permanent or Irreversible: What Difference Does It Make?

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D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A. Executive Director A number of years ago, I was out of town when we had significant flooding at home. There was some leaking of water into the basement, and one of our then-teenage sons decided to make sure I would be aware of where exactly the leaks had appeared. He used a hot pink permanent marker to delineate the problem on the drywall for me. When my husband arrived home at the end of a full day, he became rather “excited” about our son’s decision. Thankfully, an older son found a solution to ...read more

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Open Letter to Health Care Professionals: We Have a Problem

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D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A. Executive Director

To Health Care Professionals: We have a problem. Our health care systems typically have multiple levels of health care \”providers\” who see and treat patients with or without physician input or oversight. The interposition of electronic medical records and automated systems add another layer of complexity to the health care arena. Young trainees — medical students and others — have, due to various pandemic policies, been \”trained\” online. The distance between health care professional and patient has increased by many of these factors. The problem we health care professionals have is with the second word ...read more

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Surgical Castration Decision by Surrogates

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D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A. Executive Director

After evaluating the situation and weighing the options for months, my husband and I took our two-year-old Golden Retriever to the veterinarian for surgery. “Rudy” has been with us for two years, and is fully grown. He is a loving dog, who is obsessed with playing ball in the backyard – between petting sessions, of course. He has marked his territory in the great outdoors for more than a year; of late, he has decided to claim some of the indoor space as well. That is a no-no: something we will not tolerate.

Nonetheless, we both ...read more

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My Life, My Death, My Choice … or NOT

Blog, Other Voices / /

 

Joyce A. Shelton, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Emerita Trinity International University

As we emerge from the shadow of a worldwide pandemic that forced society to seek safety in unprecedented government control, we are finding that governments are now unwilling to hand back the reins to the populace. New laws, hastily passed, are designed to limit individual freedoms and solidify the power of policy makers over our lives. Frequently, we are told that these laws are for own good and/or the good of our society. Those who disagree are often marginalized, cancelled, or even arrested, accused of obstructing needed liberal social change. Hard earned ...read more

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The Written Word

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What We\’re Reading

C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D. Distinguished Fellow The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture

 

\”A Call to Christian Academics Regarding Medical and Technological Ethics.\”

Larry Locke is a Professor and Associate Dean of the McLane College of Business at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and a Research Fellow of LCC International University. This insightful essay issues a call for Christian academics to invest themselves in the medical ethical questions of today. “Now is the time,” he concludes, “for Christian academics and Christian ethicists to apply themselves and all their skill to these and other looming questions. Our generation has been gifted with an ...read more

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A Day in the Life of a Patient

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D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A. Executive Director

30 November 2022

Her son asked if I could be there by 9:00 A.M., when the hospitalist would likely make rounds. I agreed, and made the three-hour journey on a Monday in November. My friend was the patient, and I, a visitor. What I saw in the ensuing hours made me beyond sad.

A nurse came in to “take her vitals.” That meant she wheeled in a cart with various measuring components: a wristband to measure blood pressure, a probe to take the patient’s temperature, and a pulse oximeter to measure blood oxygen content. The patient was ...read more

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Informed Consent: A Hazy Concept

Blog, C. Ben Mitchell, End of Life, Other Voices / /

C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D. Distinguished Fellow The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture

We’re all too familiar with those awkward television commercials for drugs whose names cannot be pronounced because they have too many consonants. To be fair, drug manufacturers have run out of eloquent ways to combine the letters of the alphabet, so they just string them together as best they can. But beyond the alphabet soup, the television voice recites a sometimes-arresting list of possible complications of taking the drug: dizziness, insomnia, tiredness—or the even more arresting—intense sexual or gambling urges and explosive diarrhea, which hopefully do not occur simultaneously! The ...read more

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Life and Choice

Blog, United States / /

Janet Liljestrand, M.D., M.A.

In 1862 Louis Pasteur performed the definitive experiment that proved even the smallest organisms, those only seen under the microscope, derived from other like organisms. (1) Life came from life. Fast forward to 1973, and Justice Blackmun, writing for the majority decision in Roe v. Wade stated “We need not resolve the difficult decision of when life begins”. (2) What was the Justice’s definition of life? The human zygote contains all it needs for cellular division–and thus growth–at the union of a living sperm and living egg. How then has its human life not begun? Yes, in ...read more

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