Ezekiel Emanuel: We don't have enough solid organs for transplantation...

Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others

Ezekiel Emanuel

doctors cost patient

Patients who are being kept alive by technology and want to end their lives already have a recognized constitutional right to stop any and all medical interventions, from respirators to antibiotics. They do not need physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Ezekiel Emanuel

physicians technology suicide

Vaccines are the most cost-effective health care interventions there are. A dollar spent on a childhood vaccination not only helps save a life, but greatly reduces spending on future healthcare.

Ezekiel Emanuel

vaccines childhood dollars

Services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.

Ezekiel Emanuel

becoming citizens example

When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated... The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.

Ezekiel Emanuel

curves people years

Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia have been profound ethical issues confronting doctors since the birth of Western medicine, more than 2,000 years ago.

Ezekiel Emanuel

ethical-issues doctors suicide

Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change... Savings will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others.

Ezekiel Emanuel

doctors cutting thinking

I'm the son of a pediatrician, and I do believe that the most important resource we have is our kids. And I think the most important thing for America's future is to invest more in our children.

Ezekiel Emanuel

believe kids children

We all focus on health care and diabetes and heart disease but there's all sorts of things like the simple fact that, you know, heavier people, transportation is more, so there's more spent on gasoline, more on jet fuel, people have had to change the size of doorways, the size of chairs on airplanes and at sports stadiums, so there's a lot of hidden costs as well to the increasing girth of Americans.

Ezekiel Emanuel

airplane heart sports

By establishing a social policy that keeps physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia illegal but recognizes exceptions, we would adopt the correct moral view: the onus of proving that everything had been tried and that the motivation and rationale were convincing would rest on those who wanted to end a life.

Ezekiel Emanuel

motivation suicide views

Reasoning based on cost has been strenuously resisted; it violated the Hippocratic Oath, was associated with rationing, and derided as putting a price on life... Indeed, many physicians were willing to lie to get patients what they needed from insurance companies that were trying to hold down costs.

Ezekiel Emanuel

physicians trying lying

An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.

Ezekiel Emanuel

obvious patient example

Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness.

Ezekiel Emanuel

graduates medical school

Anyone who lives in Washington and has an official position viscerally understands the cost of a lack of privacy. Every dinner - especially ones with a journalist in attendance - is preceded by the mandatory, 'This is off the record.' But everyone also knows, nothing is really 'off the record.

Ezekiel Emanuel

attendance records cost

Having been an oncologist and having cared for scores, if not hundreds, of dying patients, when you don't have a treatment that can shrink the tumor and the patient will die, it's a very difficult conversation. It's emotionally draining.

Ezekiel Emanuel

oncologists patient dying

We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions.

Ezekiel Emanuel

decision numbers people

When my children were growing up, we began every family meal - which included breakfast and dinner every day - with a prayer. We are Jewish and so it was the prayer over bread, when we were having bread, or the catch-all prayer for everything when we weren't.

Ezekiel Emanuel

growing-up prayer children

Over his illustrious career, John Harris has explored the most challenging bioethical questions with insight, engaging wit, and eloquence. In Enhancing Evolution, Harris does it again. He argues that it is not just an option but an obligation for people to use available biomedical technologies to enhance their own--and their children's--physical and mental abilities. Harris rightly deserves his reputation for fearlessly following his ethical arguments wherever they lead.

Ezekiel Emanuel

technology careers children

I guess, as an Emanuel, I have a voice that carries.

Ezekiel Emanuel

carrie voice

I am not sure precisely why we need to have privacy, but everyone knows for sure that we need to relax and not have to put on our social, outwardly looking face all of the time.

Ezekiel Emanuel

relax faces needs

We don't have enough solid organs for transplantation; not enough kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs. When you get a liver and you have three people who need it, who should get it? We tried to come up with an ethically defensible answer. Because we have to choose.