One of the best outcomes from majoring in Philosophy is how it nurtured my sense of curiosity. The toolset that I gained helps me look critically at the world and think deeply about issues. Alison and I’s story is in its twelfth year. We started dating the final semester of college, and the story continues today.
Our days color our conversations. Alison brings home fascinating stories from clinic. These stories deal more with themes of humanity than clinical descriptions. Medicine may be a hard science, but its application deals exclusively with people. Patients come through the doors seeking help for the things that ail or annoy them. The causes are attributable to lifestyle, behavior, and family history.
Philosophy applied to medicine is bioethics. Science possesses great capacity to heal and relieve suffering, but it’s amoral. It can just as easily help as it can hurt. Regrettably, there are plenty of instances today where medicine is a tool to destroy life rather than restore and heal it.
This blog is in its ninth year of publication, with more than 850 articles about my experience of married life. Looking through posts, I see the timeline of Alison and I’s relationship. I see my personal growth and struggles, and my advice for myself. In addition to the blog, these themes led me to write and publish three books. It’s a great body of work that represents my intellectual contribution to humanity.
This Spring, I’m adding to that work. Last week, I finished the final draft of a new digital magazine that I’ll publish twice a year. It’s called
Applied Bioethics Magazine, and it takes the complex topics of medicine and bioethics and, like this blog, breaks them down into manageable pieces.
Like on this blog, I take the Catholic worldview and apply it to bioethics. The tone and readability will feel familiar to regular readers, as well as anyone who’s read one of my books. My goal is to not be an expert authoring a textbook, but a knowledgeable friend passing on helpful information. Each issue can be read in 30 minutes or less.
We’re living longer, which means that we must face the difficulties of caring for our aging parents and managing our complex healthcare decisions. When making care decisions, we need the intellectual tools to choose the ethical path and to make them with confidence. That’s my goal with this new magazine.
The first issue will be out in April. I hope that you’ll consider taking 30 minutes twice a year to build up your toolset so that you can make choices for you and your family that promote and protect the dignity of the human person.
Tags: Virtue
