What It Means to be Human: Knocking Us Off the Pedestal

I am in LA, near my old stomping grounds in the San Fernando Valley, where I just gave grand rounds at a Veteran’s medical facility to physicians, residents, and other medical staffers. We had a very good discussion about maintaining human intrinsic dignity as the fundamental purpose of bioethics and medical care.  It was very encouraging, actually, and confirmed my sense that medical clinicians continue to cling to Hippocratic values, even as the intelligentsia tries to push their eventual successors in a more utilitarian direction.

I now have some family business to attend, so I may be relatively scarce on the blog today.  But so you won’t miss me, my latest What It Means to be Human podcast is out: “Knocking Human Beings Off the Pedestal of Exceptionalism.”  This issue continues to generate tremendous interest here and elsewhere, and indeed, what could be more important that who and what we are—and what that means.  Here’s the link.