Category / Blog / What's New
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![A game of chess.]()
Blurred Lines at the Bedside: A Call for Ethical Presence
Ethical presence honors humanity and fosters humility. A clinical ethicist explores the ethical issues nurses confront in patient care and the need for organizational leaders to pay greater attention to the role ethics plays in addressing these challenges. She concludes with a call to foster an ethical culture by investing in ethics services. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![Portrait of Mike Rode.]()
Mike Rode Continues Stowers Legacy at the Center for Practical Bioethics
Mike Rode Continues Stowers Legacy at the Center for Practical Bioethics. Mike Rode is a board member for the Center and Vice President and Senior Investment Director at American Century since 2018.
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![A graphic stating the Ethics Dispatch is like an ethics committee meeting in a box. With four topic sections: monthly hot topic, new clinical ethics case study, current bioethics news stories and ethical musing essay.]()
Ethical Leadership in Healthcare: One Key Element
Justice strengthens leadership, and conversely, when leadership lacks justice, moral distress proliferates. Leaders who model fairness signal that ethical concerns are legitimate operational considerations. They’re a practical necessity – not distractions from efficiency. In Ethical Musings, we compare the ad hominem ethical fallacy to other ethical systems’ approach to judging moral character and leadership. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![A shadow of a person on pavement.]()
The Bystander Effect: Epstein, AI, Minneapolis, and the Holocaust
The author draws connections between what she’s learned about bystanders then and what she sees unfolding now in the Epstein scandal, artificial intelligence, and Minneapolis. She wonders what, if anything, we have learned about taking a stand and what difference that can still make. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![Portrait of Emily Carnes, MD]()
The Necessity of Narrative Medicine in Treating Disabled Patients
The necessity of narrative medicine in treating disabled patients is discussed in this blog. The authors propose using narrative as one way to increase health literacy and reduce bias and ableism and offer a framework to approach clinical encounters with disabled patients. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![A graphic stating the Ethics Dispatch is like an ethics committee meeting in a box. With four topic sections: monthly hot topic, new clinical ethics case study, current bioethics news stories and ethical musing essay.]()
When Empathy Is Turned into Fear
Empathy is redirected into self-protection. When immigration enforcement is highly visible, inconsistently applied, and no longer constrained by once-respected boundaries, people begin to ask not only what is happening to them? but could this happen to us? Distance begins to feel safer than beneficence. All this while the steps needed to protect immigrant patients are well known, ethically justified and within bounds of the law. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![A graphic stating the Ethics Dispatch is like an ethics committee meeting in a box. With four topic sections: monthly hot topic, new clinical ethics case study, current bioethics news stories and ethical musing essay.]()
When the ECMO Bridge Leads Nowhere
No Tidy Answers: When the ECMO Bridge Leads Nowhere Perhaps it’s not about destination but the journey. That when we cannot alter the destination, we can profoundly shape the experience of getting there. The case study picks up the topic with a patient whose husband requests ECMO to save her life without her consent. Ryan follows up with the one question to ask about ECMO and other medical miracles. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![Portrait of Lily Rajaee, BS, MS]()
Empowering Medical Trainees to Confront the Misinformation Epidemic
Empowering medical trainees to confront the misinformation epidemic. CPB Francis Co-Chair Kayhan Parsi and one of his medical students, Lily Rajaee, examine the misinformation problem and propose a framework involving three steps that can help guide productive conversations with patients. The Center for Practical Bioethics
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![A graphic stating the Ethics Dispatch is like an ethics committee meeting in a box. With four topic sections: monthly hot topic, new clinical ethics case study, current bioethics news stories and ethical musing essay.]()
Doing Harm: Vaccine Policy in the Age of Distortion
Doing Harm: Vaccine Policy in the Age of Distortion The January 2026 Ethics Dispatch discusses how the current head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is calling for the reduction or even the elimination of childhood vaccine and by doing so, is doing harm. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![Kayhan Parsi, JD, PhD, HEC-C, and Nanette Elster, JD, MPH, as our John B. Francis Co-Chairs in Bioethics.]()
Interview with Kayhan Parsi and Nanette Elster: the John B. Francis Co-Chairs in Bioethics
Interview with Kayhan Parsi and Nanette Elster: the John B. Francis Co-Chairs in Bioethics Since joining the Center this fall, Professors Kayhan Parsi, JD, PhD, HEC-C, and Nanette Elster, JD, MPH, discuss what excites them most about supported decision-making, disability ethics, and the future of bioethics education. Center for Practical Bioethics
