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Insert Comma • A Portfolio of Leigh E. Rich
Categories: Books, Ethics, Health, Politics, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on Lessons From the Death Zone

What Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” Can Teach Us About the COVID-19 Pandemic and Why We May Be Doomed to Repeat It Leigh E. Rich Abstract Book chapter for the edited volume The Twenty-First Century and Its Discontents examining the novel coronavirus pandemic and the U.S. response through the lens of Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book, […]

Categories: Ethics, Feminism, Health, History, Law, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Television, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on “Men Against Fire”

The bureaucratization of dehumanization is nothing new. Examples can be found in many eras and places and during both wartime and peace. Modern warfare, however, has meant innovations in the techniques of killing as well as the “framing” of those being killed, whether accomplished by separating the act through distance or technology or training soldiers (and the public) to “see” the enemy differently. The U.K. anthology series Black Mirror revisits this question in an episode titled “Men Against Fire,” a direct reference to S.L.A. Marshall’s controversial 1947 book of the same name, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command. Marshall observed the battlefield as a lonely and traumatic place and portrayed this isolation—and an individual’s moral upbringing—for soldiers’ hesitancy to fire on an enemy, even when ordered or in danger of losing their own lives. What was needed, according to Marshall, were “well-trained foot soldiers” freed from such burdens. While bureaucratic techniques that dehumanize or obscure the Other can be particularly “useful” in war, they are perhaps more insidious beyond the bounds of war. Primary examples include Jim Crow and eugenics, with reverberations of both still felt today. Examining the Black Mirror episode, not in relation to war or Marshall but when men are not “against fire,” sheds light on why health disparities and other inequities persist and the need for movements like Black Lives Matter or new waves of feminism. In civil society, the “problem of battle command” has been understood by certain policymakers and powerbrokers as a hesitancy to limit safety nets (“entitlements”) or reproductive and civil freedoms of the “undeserving” in the name of protecting the financial and corporeal health of the social body. Viewing “Men Against Fire” through examples such as eugenic thinking reveals how discriminatory rhetoric against poor, minority, and other stigmatized populations has lingered during peacetime through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Unlike Marshall’s conclusion, the answer to ending such policies and practices is rooted not in overcoming a sense of morality but engaging in it.

Categories: Books, Editorials, Ethics, Health, Media, Politics, Science, Social Science, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on Prestidigitation vs. public trust

Or how we can learn to change the conversation and prevent powers from “organizing the discontent” By Leigh E. Rich When Drs. Silvia Camporesi, Mark Davis, and Maria Vaccarella (2017) approached the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry about a symposium on “Public Trust in Expert Knowledge” as well as a panel session at the October 2016 […]

Categories: Editorials, Ethics, Media, Politics, Social Science, Television, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on Thirty years yet miles of the medium-metaphor to go

Jon Stewart, Neil Postman, and “understanding the politics and epistemology of media” By Leigh E. Rich Right after completing my doctorate, I took a job as a political reporter. The pay was lousy, the position had little to do with the health sciences, and the newspaper, though respected, wasn’t big enough to compete with the […]

Categories: Editorials, Ethics, Health, Humor, Media, Politics, Social Science, Television, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on “Can a company be bitchy?”

Corporate (and political and scientific) social responsibility By Leigh E. Rich and Michael A. Ashby PHIL: Oh, God, Lem. You’re using science for no good. We took an oath we would try to do that less (Better Off Ted 2009a, “Bioshuffle,” episode 109). The American sitcom Better Off Ted (whose second and final season was […]

Categories: Ethics, Health, Politics, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on Medical errors and apologies

Should health care providers be forced to apologise after things go wrong? By Stuart McLennan, Simon Walker, and Leigh E. Rich The issue of apologising to patients harmed by adverse events has been a subject of interest and debate within medicine, politics, and the law since the early 1980s. Although apology serves several important social […]

Categories: Editorials, Ethics, Health, Media, Politics, Social Science, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on Crime and punishment, rehabilitation or revenge

Bioethics for prisoners? By Leigh E. Rich and Michael A. Ashby With some exceptions, it appears that the non-incarcerated world spends little time, if any at all, thinking about how prisoners are treated, whether during detainment or incarceration, after release, or when being put to state-sanctioned death. Of course, in part this is understandable, as […]

Categories: Ethics, Health, Politics, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on Apologies in medicine

Legal protection is not enough By Stuart McLennan, Leigh E. Rich, and Robert D. Truog There has been an important shift toward openness regarding adverse events and their communication to patients. Recent research suggests that saying sorry is a key element of successful disclosure practice. However, fear of legal action has been identified as a […]

Categories: Ethics, Health, Politics, Social Science, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on HIV/AIDS among Brazil’s prison populations

Significant political, public health, and human rights implications for failing to provide prisoners with adequate care By Leigh E. Rich and José de Arimatéia da Cruz There are significant ethical, public health, and human rights implications for failing to provide detainees and prisoners with adequate safety and health care, particularly with regard to infectious diseases […]

Categories: Ethics, Health, Politics, Social Science, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on Competing imperatives?

Moral and public health duties of preventing and treating infectious disease in prisons By José de Arimatéia da Cruz and Leigh E. Rich An Unjust Burden “Prisoners go to jail to be punished for offending society and not to get infectious diseases” (Simooya 2010, 33), yet communicable disease rates among prisoners and detainees are consistently […]

Categories: Books, History, Politics, Religion, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on Scientology as case study

What the ethical and legal history of Scientology can teach us about religion By Leigh E. Rich Though in many ways still shrouded in secrecy, Scientology could be said to be one of the most “accessible” religions in the world—that is, in terms of documenting and understanding its origins. Part of this has to do with its young age, […]

Categories: Editorials, Ethics, Feminism, Politics, Social Science, Utrinque Paratus | Comments Off on Real dialogue needed on rape

Rep. Todd Akin’s comments a missed opportunity for cultural and ethical debate By Leigh E. Rich These days, one has to feel some sympathy for politicians, political candidates, celebrities and others in the public eye. Modern media technologies and the proliferation of communication channels have created something of a Panopticon, where the relative ease of […]