Currents are unpredictable, and they can be dangerous, carrying us along to places we don't want to go. Yet currents also indicate the vitality of a lake or a sea.
I guess ethical currents are about the same thing. Sometimes, as with transgender issues, we are hit suddenly with things we don't expect. Caitlin Jenner's sudden and very public revelation of her gender status raised a lot of ethical issues in a short time. We've known about transsexuality for a long time (rabbinic scholars note several words for different genders even in the Middle Ages) but I think this time publicity got ahead of ethics and that is one of the reasons we have not given it the ethical analysis it deserves. Fortunately, we have excellent articles by Becket Gremmels of CHRISTUS Health and Carol Bayley of Dignity Health. You'll note that they reach somewhat different conclusions. I think that's pretty much the state of the question. As both of them note, there is much we don't yet know so we must be careful not to resolve the many issues too quickly. I hope their articles stimulate some healthy professional discussion among us. We plan to feature additional articles about this topic through the year. Please feel free to respond with questions or comments to [email protected] about these and other articles in HCEUSA. We look forward to your thoughts and suggestions for future topics!
We also have a summary of a recent CHA webinar in the "From the Field" section presented by Fr. Myles Sheehan, S.J., on tube feeding for elderly patients and those suffering from dementia. He presents a fine overview of clinical experience and moral analysis.
Related to this is a review of several articles about geriatric dialysis, which our Mission Program and Research Association Lori Ashmore-Ruppel and I did. Most of the articles we reviewed suggested criteria for decision making, but several also noted that education for physicians is an important need. Again, we hope this review will prompt some of you to share your own experience.
Last, Nate Hibner of the Saint Louis University Center for Health Care Ethics and students from the Saint Louis University School of Law under the direction of Amy Sanders, assistant director of the Center for Health Law Studies, have prepared a list of "Notable" items in the media for the Of Note section.
And finally, our graphic designer Les Stock has brightened up our masthead. We took this refresh as an opportunity to add "Quarterly" to the subtitle.
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