Bioethics for the People

Devan and Tyler talk with Dr. Adam Omelianchuk about a new publication on the Dead Donor Rule. We discuss the origins of the rule and why there is controversy about when and how we can tell if someone is dead. They talk about a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Find it here: Carter Winberg, Ian Ball & Robert D. Truog, Contextualizing the Dead Donor Rule in an Era of Voluntary Euthanasia, 395 New Eng. J. Med. 194 (2026).

Additional Material and Readings:

• Michael Nair-Collins, Sydney R Green, Angelina R Sutin, “Abandoning the dead donor rule? A national survey of public views on death and organ donation,” (2015) J Med Ethics 41(4):297-302. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2014-102229.

• Rob Stein, A New Proposal for Organ Donation Sparks Concern, NPR (July 8, 2026), https://www.npr.org/2026/07/08/nx-s1-5883714/organ-transplant-death-donation.

• Adam Omelianchuk, Alexander Morgan Capron, Lainie Friedman Ross, Arthur R. Derse, James L. Bernat, David Magnus. "Neither Ethical nor Prudent: Why Not to Choose Normothermic Regional Perfusion" Hastings Center Reports. 2024

• Adam Omelianchuk, James Bernat, Arthur Caplan, David Greer, Christos Lazaridis, Ariane Lewis, Thaddeus Pope, Lainie Friedman Ross, David Magnus. " Revise the Uniform Determination of Death Act to Align the Law With Practice Through Neurorespiratory Criteria." Neurology. 2022 Mar 29; 98 (1) : 532-536.

• Adam Omelianchuk. " The inviolateness of life and equal protection: a defense of the dead-donor rule. " Theor Med Bioeth. 2022 Feb ; 43 (1): 1-27.

• Adam Omelianchuk. " Brain Death as the End of a Human Organism as a Self-moving Whole." J Med Philos. 2021 Oct 1; 46 (5) : 530-560.

• Scott J. Schweikart, “Reexamining the Flawed Legal Basis of the “Dead Donor Rule” as a Foundation for Organ Donation Policy,” AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(12):E1019-1024. doi: 10.1001/amajethics.2020.1019

• Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Ethics Committee. (2016, December). Ethical considerations of imminent death donation white paper. Health Resources and Services Administration. https://www.hrsa.gov/optn/professionals/resources/ethical-considerations/imminent-death-donation-white-paper

In this episode we talk with occupational therapist Dr. Sarah Jean Barton about occupation, disability, theology and more.

This week we talk with primary care physician Dr. Zachary Sartor about his work in behavioral health. How are bodily health and mental health related? Why is it important for primary care physicians to treat both?

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Jada Wiggleton-Little, assistant professor of philosophy at ‘an’ Ohio State University, about fat phobia and the dismissal of fat patients' pain. She unpacks how clinicians treat such pain as normal and even deserved — a "desert pain" framing that casts patients as unentitled to further investigation, empathy, or care.

Additional Readings:

• Kate Manne, Unshrinking: How to Face Fat Phobia

• Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia

• Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

Dr. Wiggleton-Little’s Selected Publications:

• "Black Women and 'Doing' Pain: An Insurgent Act," American Philosophical Quarterly (Special Issue on Contemporary Issues in Black Philosophy), forthcoming.

• "Cure but Not Cured: Gene-Editing Therapy and The Ethics of Framing Language for Transforming Sickle Cell Disease," (with Shameka Poetry Thomas, Kristin Seastrand, and Consuela Albright), Hastings Center Report, forthcoming.

• "Pain Dismissal and the Limits of Epistemic Injustice," Hypatia, 1-17, 2025.

• "Sharing Pain: A Hybrid Expressivist Account," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 102(3): 808-822. 2024.

• "'Just' a Painful Period: A Philosophical Perspective Review of the Dismissal of Menstrual Pain," Womens Health (London), 20:1-6. 2024.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Dolores Morris, Associate Professor of Instruction at the University of South Florida. In addition to being a brilliant philosopher, Dr. Morris teaches bioethics to undergraduate students using this podcast! Learn how she does it and more on this week’s episode.

Read more about Dr. Morris’ teaching on her Substack here.

Wondering how much time physicians save using ambient AI? Find the answer here

In this episode, Tyler and Devan talk with longtime friend of the pod Steve Foley. Steve is a retired psychologist and a big fan of clinical ethics and deep, meaningful conversations.

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Keisha Ray about the environment as a social determinant of health and the unequal ways the environment affects our communities. Communities that live in polluted environments experience worse health outcomes.

For more on this topic from Dr. Ray:

• The Bioethics of Environmental Injustice, AJOB 

In this introduction to Inked by Faith, we begin the story of Operation Tat-Type, a Cold War civil defense program that blood-typed and tattooed thousands of Americans in the early 1950s, including children.

The series begins with a family discovery: a grandmother’s tattoo; never hidden, just never talked about. From there, we ask a larger question—not about secrets or conspiracies, but about how communities normalize extraordinary measures in moments of fear… and how those memories fade.

This episode sets the stage for the stories still waiting to be told.

Devan and Tyler catch up after a busy few months.

For the past several months, listeners have been asking the same questions:
Did you quit? Are you guys fighting? Did the podcast die?

The answer is no, no, and no.

We’ve been working on a limited series that takes us deep into a particular moment in medical history. A moment with long shadows. Legal consequences. Ethical fault lines. Human impact that still echoes.

This time, we’re not just talking. We’re investigating and reporting.
In archives. In communities. In stories that haven’t been told this way before.

This project has taken time because it demands care—care for the history, for the people involved, and for the complexity of the ethical questions it raises.

We’re almost ready to share it.

Stay tuned in 2026.

In this episode, Tyler and Devan talk with Ray Moseley and Marcia Brown, both from the University of Florida School of Medicine. Ray and Marcia talk about their pilot project that looked at how accurately an AI tool can predict the medical decisions of a patient, compared with a family member or surrogate. The outcomes are surprising.