Dialysis and Ethics

Abstract

It is never an easy thing in our times to have the concerns of the philosopher. Not only a sort of “stranger in a strange land,” the philosopher is perforce obliged to do what is not usually done within his own native habitat: to gain a real appreciation of the rigors of clinical discipline, but more, to immerse himself in the terribly, and at times for him terrifying, concrete world of human suffering and affliction, thereby to practice his trade of pursuing the raw and disturbing questions of morals, humanity, and understanding. I can only hope that the following thoughts and questions will keep the spirit of that commitment and be actually appreciative of the lives of patients and the labors of clinicians.