November 18, 2025
(Virginia Quarterly Online) – But buried beneath this evergreen drama of illness and cure, the promise of miracle biotech breakthroughs and heroic survivorship, is the story of how American business interests helped to steer politicians away from stopping the cancer … Read More
November 14, 2025
(MedPage Today) – Professional journal articles, reports, and policies are arguably our primary written products, since the main job in bioethics is to help clinicians and others navigate ethical challenges in their work. But we also write for the public, … Read More
November 12, 2025
(The Intelligencer) – As a palliative care physician, I strongly urge Gov. JB Pritzker to veto SB 1950, legislation to legalize assisted suicide in Illinois. I am opposed to this legislation for multiple reasons, but especially to protect my patients. … Read More
November 12, 2025
(New York Times) – For the vast majority of my psychotherapy patients, the gravitational pull of phones and social media alters the most important aspects of who they are, their relationships with others and how they move through the world. … Read More
November 11, 2025
(STAT News) – Now in retirement, he calls funeral homes and surveys undertakers to document alleged vaccine harms. Over the next two days, I heard versions of the same arc again and again: loss reframed as mission, grievance redirected into … Read More
November 11, 2025
(The Atlantic) – OpenAI’s lawyers had some inquiries for the opposing counsel, which is normal. For instance, they requested information about therapy Raine may have received, and Edelson complied. But some of the asks began to feel invasive, he told … Read More
November 10, 2025
(Lifehacker) – Hint: It’s not you. In discussing this topic with friends and family, most everyone I know assumed their health data enjoys robust federal protections under HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Sadly, they’re wrong. HIPAA applies … Read More
November 5, 2025
(The Atlantic) – The decline in drinking coincides with a decline in social activity more broadly. A variety of causes have been blamed for this trend toward isolation, phones chief among them. Maybe the phone theory is correct, and maybe … Read More
November 3, 2025
(WSJ) – It was so much easier to have a conversation with a chatbot than a human being. But the more I talked to AI, the less I talked to everybody else. Talking to an AI every day satisfied my … Read More
October 30, 2025
(Undark) – Cannabidiol is sold as safe, but animal studies show that it can interfere with adolescent brain development. Usually derived from the hemp plant, CBD is pitched as a calming remedy with none of the stigma of marijuana. Even … Read More
October 29, 2025
(Wired) – In recent times, there have been two techno-religious awakenings. Here comes the third? To recap: If, over the past few decades, tech became the new religion, and then religion became the religion, you could say that AI is … Read More
October 24, 2025
(Medpage Today) – Here’s what concerns me most as a clinician: the absurdity of the notion that an artificially generated, non-sentient avatar could be a reasonable companion for a child or teen. It goes against everything we know about developmental … Read More
October 23, 2025
(Undark) – A dangerous pattern is emerging in media coverage of these topics. A previously expert-driven debate (still far from settled) about the medical and legal frameworks and best practices in end-of-life care is turning into a political exercise in … Read More
October 22, 2025
(The Cut) – Online, Brooke Eby shows us what navigating her 30s with the neurodegenerative disease looks like. Here, a week behind the screen. In the past three years, Brooke Eby has gone from Peloton classes to a walker to … Read More
October 21, 2025
(Maclean’s) – The world’s most powerful companies used my books, and millions more, without permission to train their AI models. I’m suing to stop them. When I learned that my copyrighted work had helped fuel this explosion, I thought of … Read More
October 20, 2025
(New York Times) – Even so, there are signs that users have grown disillusioned with A.I. Maybe its unreliability will follow the pattern of search engines, which are altogether useless these days. Or maybe its benefits will never offset its … Read More
October 17, 2025
(The Atlantic) – I don’t think of myself as having much in common with Altman, but his persistent tinkering felt uncomfortably recognizable. I’m also in the dirty business of using language to keep someone hooked on a product: I write … Read More
October 7, 2025
(CT) – It’s only a short leap to see that if men and women are interchangeable, if we are defined more by our late-modern capitalistic output than by our sexed bodies, our common human limitations, and our social relationships, then … Read More
October 3, 2025
(CT) – A tragic accident jump-started my relationship with God. It also made me question his goodness. I spent a lot of time in the hospital wondering just what kind of God this was. I had no doubt that God … Read More
September 29, 2025
(After Babel) – Your life is my background noise Marketing your memories also desecrates them. You hand over your hope, your hurt, your life to be consumed, reducing it to reality TV. Your precious memories are my mindless entertainment. Your … Read More
September 22, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – After an unthinkable diagnosis, a Journal editor learned how challenging it is to find treatment and support for a rare disease—and discovered reasons for hope. I had come across chordoma during my late night internet research … Read More
September 16, 2025
(The Guardian) – The cuddly chatbot Grem is designed to ‘learn’ your child’s personality, while every conversation they have is recorded, then transcribed by a third party. It wasn’t long before I wanted this experiment to be over … ‘I’m … Read More
September 12, 2025
(The Atlantic) – The trouble with chatbots is not just that they allow students to get away with cheating or that they remove a sense of urgency from academics. The technology has also led students to focus on external results … Read More
September 11, 2025
(The Economist) – Adapting to an emptier planet will not be easy, but it will be doable. None of the predictions of demographic disaster seems plausible this century, and 2100 is so far away that forecasts beyond it seem pointless. … Read More
September 9, 2025
(The New Atlantis) – Today, the number is around 60 percent. Even patients scheduled for major surgery at a hospital, and destined for what is called “planned admission,” often come to the operating room directly from home. With roughly half … Read More
