Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Patrick Guinnan

  • Is it ethical to bring religion into medicine?

    Patrick Guinan Chicago, Illinois, USA   Over 200 years ago Voltaire wrote that one half of metaphysics was known to everybody and that the other half will never be known. It is by no means certain that ethics has yet reached the same high degree of development. At the beginnings of recorded history, the priests…

  • The human condition

    Patrick D. Guinan Chicago, Illinois, USA This article was previously published in Social Justice Review, Vol. 101, No. 5-6, May-June 2010, pp. 89-90   Introduction The human condition is the “totality of the experiences of being human and living human lives.”1 The exposition of this idea has occupied philosophers from the beginning, but more recently…

  • Must life always be prolonged?

    Patrick D. Guinan Chicago, Illinois, United States   This is an open-ended question and, for that reason, difficult to answer. We agree that life is a natural good and should not be willfully terminated (self-defense and a just war being exceptions). But in many instances life can be prolonged, almost indefinitely, by such means as parenteral…