On ethics

Last week, I had the great pleasure of meeting and being on a panel with John Lantos, world-renowned neonatologist and bioethicist, at the conference for the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.  Dr. Lantos had invited me and fellow panelists, Annie Janvier and Barbara Sourkes, to discuss the topic, “Translating Pain Into Poetry.”  Annie and I read from our work, while Barbara shared with the audience her insights gained from a lifetime’s experience in providing palliative care to children.  The subsequent Q&A  centered on how to incorporate the pressing ethical concerns raised into every day discourse.  As a good friend said to me afterwards, there wouldn’t be any discussion of ethics if there weren’t a problem in the first place.

A day after our panel,  Lantos addressed the society at large in the Inaugural March of Dimes Distinguished Lecture.  In his lecture, Lantos spoke on the topic, “Doctors Are All Alike, Parents Are All Different.”  While it would be impossible to summarize Lantos’ words, but the power of his ideas lay in his overall theory that while doctors need and demand statistics to help understand and make their cases for interventions (or lack of interventions) with extremely premature infants, parents, in fact, have a nearly unpredictable set of responses to being in the situation of having given birth to those same infants.  Lantos so effectively problematized the matter, we can only hope that he publishes his remarks eventually so that others can benefit.

Despite the rainy weekend, there was much to learn, and even more to be gained.  Thank you, John, Annie and Barbara.