We'll get together with Greater Boston Humanists via Zoom on May 12 (Mothers Day) for a talk by Dr. Joe Gerstein.
Dr Gerstein writes: “In my medical practice of over 30 years, the most difficult and grueling conversations with patients and their families centered on end-of-life decision-making: whether to engage invasive technological, likely futile, endeavors or to let nature take its course. In the ‘70s, I argued that Medicare should allow physicians to charge for what was then called 'Anticipatory Ethical Decision Making.' That effort was unavailing, but was finally actuated about 10 years ago.
"In the late ‘90s, with a grant from GBH member Lisa Kuhmerker, a Professor Emeritus of Child Moral Development from CCNY who was dying of a brain tumor, I partnered with Father John Paris, a Jesuit and Professor of Bioethics at BC to produce a video product: 'Decisions at the End of Life,' which has been used widely to educate students and physicians and provoke serious discussions about how to optimize decisions in this arena, consistent with the medical ethical precepts of beneficence and autonomy. Unfortunately, signing a Health Care Proxy does not assure a comfortable, ‘good’ death.”
We will hear more about Joe’s lessons from years of work in the medical field, and reflect together on the reality of death today, and how we can work together to bring about truly humanistic policies and options.
Join us for this talk and Q&A.
BIO:
Joe Gerstein, MD, FACP is retired from the Harvard Medical School Faculty. He was President of the Humanist Association of MA (now Greater Boston Humanists) for over 40 years. He was a founding director of the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard (now the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard & MIT). He was a Humanist Pioneer of the AHA and a Humanist of the Year at Harvard for his work with SMART Recovery, an evidence-based, secular mutual-aid group recovery program, now with thousands of meetings in 38 countries, and 600 online via ZOOM (there have been over 37,000 free SMART Recovery meetings in MA since 1990). He was Boston Ethical Society Humanist of the Year for his work in combating drug company marketing fraud.
Joe has spoken on the topic of Death and Dying at several Boston-area hospitals and the Sloan-Kettering Institute in NY, as well as at the ‘Chronic Lung Disease in the Pacific Rim’ Conference in Hawaii.
(Please RSVP here to get the Zoom meeting ID, and do not share/publish it; you will likely be put in a waiting room to be pre-approved before entering the Zoom. Thanks for your patience).