Conservatives, Liberals, and Medical Progress

Throughout the developed world, healthcare systems are in crisis--with unsustainable costs, aging populations, and misguided priorities. The usual solutions--more markets, more government--are inadequate to the challenges we will face in the years ahead. Instead, conservatives and liberals alike need to rethink their assumptions about the benefits of medical progress and the struggle against death. Better medical technology, says Daniel Callahan in The New Atlantis, does not always mean better medicine, and a sane medical system needs to face up to the realities of our mortal condition.