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ARTICLES

Below are links to articles and essays I have published.

Bioethics, public policy, philosophy, religion, society, culture, health and human flourishing.

June 4, 2023

Our Missouri v. Biden court case exposes the government-led information war to censor what Americans think.

Jan 8, 2022

Newly released emails show how officials coerce social-media companies to toe the government line.

December 15, 2022

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OUR DIGITAL PANOPTICON

AMERICAN GREATNESS

October 29, 2022

How digital surveillance is gaining power for the biomedical security state.

June 14, 2021

College students aren’t guinea pigs.

5 July 2021

The excessively narrow medical exemptions for COVID vaccine mandates at many colleges put students at unnecessary risk of serious complications, including hospitalization and death.

18 August 2021

For one, the immunity of those who have recovered from COVID and their ability to transmit the virus are not proven to be different than that of the vaccinated.

April 3, 2020

Is there a formula for deciding which patients doctors try to save?

October 4, 2020

Our leaders cannot abdicate responsibility for difficult decisions and simply hide behind infectious disease epidemiologists. We have a mental health epidemic to also contend with, not to mention the economic and social effects of lockdowns. It is past time for us to reckon with these devastating realities.

BATTLEFIELD PROMOTIONS

THE NEW ATLANTIS

March 18, 2020

A call to action for medical students during the Covid pandemic.

Sept 14, 2018

An address given to the incoming medical students at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine White Coat Ceremony on August 3, 2018.

April 5, 2020

In the next few weeks, as the pandemic perhaps reaches its zenith, we will have the opportunity to decide once again what sort of society we intend to be. We should eschew all invidious discrimination and recommit ourselves to treating all who are ill as bearers of profound, inherent, and equal worth and dignity.

CARD-CARRYING PRECADAVERS

FIRST THINGS

June/July 2018

"It has been almost twenty years since I dissected a dead human body. It still seems strange: My first encounter with a human body to learn the art of healing was an encounter with a corpse. What is more, I took this body to pieces. In any other context, this act would have been a felony..."

10 August 2021

Review of Jesse Signal’s ‘The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills’

POLICE BRUTALITY AND THE SUICIDE OF REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE

PART I OF III IN THE SERIES, "THE CRISIS OF OUR TIMES"

ARC DIGITAL

June 4, 2020

Why has the normalization of violence become one of the most characteristic features of our time?

REVOLUTIONS VS. THE TOTAL REVOLUTION

PART II OF III IN THE SERIES, "THE CRISIS OF OUR TIMES" 

ARC DIGITAL

June 26, 2020

Why do today’s misbegotten revolutionary ideologies produce only nihilism?

THE LATENT FASCISM OF TODAY’S ANTI-FASCISTS

PART III OF III IN THE SERIES, "THE CRISIS OF OUR TIMES"

ARC DIGITAL

REPUBLISHED IN FOUNDATIONS

June 26, 2020

Why do so many contemporary social movements come to resemble their enemies?

FIRST TAKE NO STAND

THE NEW ATLANTIS

June 2023

On assisted suicide, the medical profession ducks behind “neutrality.”

CYBER SELF-HARM

FIRST THINGS

Jan 29, 2018

The widespread practice of digital self-harm reveals sad truths about our culture of victimhood.

DYING OF DESPAIR

FIRST THINGS

August/September 2017

"On November 4, 2014, sixteen-year-old Cameron Lee, a popular, athletic, straight-A student at Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, leapt in front of a commuter train. His suicide note provided no clear reason for his act; there were no apparent signs of mental illness, and he was not a bullied misfit."

KILLER SHOW

FIRST THINGS

May 8, 2017

The typical suicidal person is not a tragic figure fated for self-destruction, but a vulnerable individual suffering treatable mental health problems. 13 Reasons Why portrays suicide inaccurately and irresponsibly.

APOSTOLATE OF DEATH

FIRST THINGS

April 2015

"On November 1, after posting a Facebook message stating, 'Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer,' twenty-nine-year-old Brittany Maynard took a lethal dose of barbiturates, prescribed by an Oregon physician, and ended her own life."

December 30, 2020

A new superhero movie subverts the core message of modern Western life.

November 20, 2015

The debate over doctor-assisted suicide is often framed as an issue of personal autonomy and privacy. Proponents argue that assisted suicide should be legalized because it affects only those individuals who — assuming they are of sound mind — are making a rational and deliberate choice to end their lives. But presenting the issue in this way ignores the wider social consequences. What if it turns out that the individuals who make this choice in fact are influencing the actions of those who follow?

October 26, 2015

When I began as a medical student on the wards, I discovered that there was a word that physicians almost never used. In fact, they often played elaborate language games to avoid it. My first encounter with this occurred one night on call. The resident and I were eating dinner in the cafeteria when he got a page. He excused himself saying, “I need to go declare a patient …” I remember thinking, “You need to ‘declare’ a patient … what?” He avoided saying that he was going to declare a patient dead.

THE ERA OF THE NARCISSIST

FIRST THINGS

February 16, 2010

"'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,' saith the preacher. 'Hell, yeah, I’m hot!' saith the Facebook home page. This is vanity on steroids, and it is becoming the norm....  Either we will become the salt and light that purge and dispel the insipid narcissism that surrounds us, or our culture will continue to descend deeper into the loud, crass, and aggressive cult of self-worship."

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