When journalist Esmé Deprez receives a text from her father, Ron Deprez, asking for help to die, she enters one of the most ethically fraught spaces in modern medicine: Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD). This episode explores what it means to assist a loved one’s death under MAiD law—and how personal compassion collides with professional and societal ethics.

This episode features:

Esmé E. Deprez: Writer and investigative journalist.

Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH: Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.

Jennifer Eitingon, MD: Medical Director of Monument Health Hospice and Inpatient Palliative Care Attending Physician.

You can see photos and read more about Esmé and Ron Deprez’s story in her 2021 essay, “Death With Dignity: How I Helped My Dad Die.”

“playing god?” is a podcast by the iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.

To read a transcript of this episode, visit the iDeas Lab website at https://bioethics.jhu.edu/pgs2e1

The Johns Hopkins University Sesquicentennial is proud to support this podcast. JHU celebrates 150 years of pioneering education and research—advancing knowledge to meet the challenges of every generation. Learn more at 150.jhu.edu.

Life and death decisions. Difficult tradeoffs. “playing god?” explores ethical dilemmas in health and medicine through the first-person stories of people who have lived them. Brought to you by the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. New episodes weekly starting May 19.

Back in the 1960s, a committee of seven Seattle residents met regularly to decide which patients with chronic kidney disease were “worthy” of life-saving dialysis. Whoever wasn’t selected by the committee would likely die within months. An exposé of this so-called “God Squad” helped spark the formation of a new field: bioethics. In this prequel to playing god?, we’ll find out how this committee made life-and-death decisions, and why something like it is unlikely to happen again.

Show Notes:

This episode features interviews with:

Richard M. Mizelle, Jr., Associate Professor of History, University of Houston

Kate Butler, Assistant Professor of Nephrology, University of Washington School of Medicine

The God Squad was just one of many notable cases that led to the formation of the field of bioethics. The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, has compiled a timeline of many of the most famous cases and their impact. Check it out here.

The Berman Institute has also collected oral histories– first hand accounts of the doctors, philosophers, lawyers and other scholars who were involved in many of these cases. You can explore that collection here.

To learn more about the ethics issues raised in this episode, visit the Berman Institute’s episode guide.

The Greenwall Foundation seeks to make bioethics integral to decisions in health care, policy, and research. Learn more at greenwall.org.