Daniel Callahan

Daniel Callahan was born in Washington, D.C., on July 19, 1930.{{cite encyclopedia

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In high school Callahan was a swimmer and chose to attend Yale University because of its competitive swimming program. While at Yale, he was drawn to interdisciplinary studies and graduated in 1952 with a double degree in English and Philosophy. He received the M.A. degree from Georgetown University in 1956 and the Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1965.Daniel Callahan Director of international programs www.The futureoflife.com The hasting center www.thefutureoflife.com/speakers/callahan.htm

From 1961 to 1968, Callahan worked as executive editor of Commonweal, a Catholic journal of opinion. Callahan became an influential writer and author within Catholic intellectual circles during this period, which was a tumultuous time in the Catholic Church. In addition to numerous articles in Commonweal, he wrote or edited nine books, including The Mind of the Catholic Layman, Honesty in the Church, and The Catholic Case for Contraception. The historian Rodger Van Allen once described Callahan as “perhaps the most influential Catholic layman of the 1960s.”{{cite web|url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/daniel-callahan-bioethics|title=Daniel Callahan & Bioethics {{!}} Commonweal Magazine|website=www.commonwealmagazine.org|language=en|access-date=2018-01-19}}

During the late 1960s, Callahan left the Catholic Church—later explaining his disenchantment in the book [https://www.amazon.com/Once-Catholic-Prominent-Catholics-Ex-Catholics/dp/039542111X Once a Catholic]—and became interested in the intersection of medicine and ethics. With support from the Population Council{{cite news|url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20091490,00.html|title=Pro-Choice Vs. Pro-Life Is a Moral Dilemma, Says Daniel Callahan: We Carry Both Traditions Within Us|author=Giovanna Breu|date=August 12, 1985|publisher=People magazine}} and the Ford Foundation, Callahan traveled around the world to study how different countries approached the issue of abortion, as well as ethical issues in family planning and population control. The result was the groundbreaking 1970 book Abortion: Law, Choice, and Morality.{{Cite book|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/daniel-callahan-5/abortion-law-choice-and-morality/|title=ABORTION: Law, Choice and Morality by Daniel Callahan {{!}} Kirkus Reviews|language=en-us}} Callahan would remain involved in debates over abortion for years to come and was often interviewed by the media on this subject. He described himself as "51 percent pro-choice.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XHyXnteo9vcC&q=daniel+callahan+and+51+percent+pro-choice&pg=PA227|title=Micro-Politics: Agency in a Postfeminist Era|last=Mann|first=Patricia S.|date=1994|publisher=U of Minnesota Press|isbn=9781452901770|language=en}} In 1984, he and wife Sidney Callahan—who took an anti-abortion position—co-edited a book, Abortion: Understanding Differences, that included essays from people on all sides of this issue. The couple's longstanding differences on abortion were once the subject of a feature in People magazine and they engaged in a number of public debates on abortion, including on PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour.{{Cite news|url=http://people.com/archive/pro-choice-vs-pro-life-is-a-moral-dilemma-says-daniel-callahan-we-carry-both-traditions-within-us-vol-24-no-7/|title=Pro-Choice Vs. Pro-Life Is a Moral Dilemma, Says Daniel Callahan: We Carry Both Traditions Within Us|work=PEOPLE.com|access-date=2018-01-19|language=en}}

In 1969, Callahan cofounded the Hastings Center with Willard Gaylin, a noted psychiatrist. The center, originally named the Institute for Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, and based in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, was the world's first research organization devoted to bioethics. It played a pioneering role in developing this field by bringing together scholars from across different disciplines, including medicine, law, science and philosophy. Such noted leaders in bioethics, such as Arthur Caplan and Robert M. Veatch, began their careers at the Hastings Center. Callahan served as the center's director from its inception to September 1, 1996.In honour of Daniel Callahan: A medieval disputation on bioethics www.Acessmyliabry.com November 01, 1996. Humane care international. Margaret A. Somerville During that time, he wrote numerous articles and edited multiple books, including on issues of death and dying and genetics.

In 1987, Callahan published Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society, a book that argued that U.S. society would need to limit expensive care for those very elderly Americans, who were unlikely to live long or good lives. The financial cost was too high, he argued, and came at the expense of pressing needs such as education. In his book he also proposed an "age-based standard for the termination of life-extending treatment". Upon its publication, The New York Times Book Review wrote: "This is a pivotal work that poses hard questions and proposes provocative answers. Setting Limits promises to be the benchmark for future moral, medical and policy discussions of aging."{{cite web|url=http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/setting-limits|title=Setting Limits {{!}} Georgetown University Press|website=press.georgetown.edu|language=en|access-date=2018-01-19}} The book attracted wide attention and generated significant controversy, including two volumes of essays debating or criticizing Callahan's ideas.{{Cite book|title=Set No Limits: A Rebuttal to Daniel Callahan's Proposal to Limit Health Care for the Elderly|date=1991-10-01|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=9780252018602|editor-last=Barry|editor-first=Robert L.|edition=y First printing|location=Urbana|language=English|editor-last2=Bradley|editor-first2=Gerard}} In 2009, Callahan was interviewed by NPR about his reflections on Setting Limits as he aged and responded to charges of hypocrisy for benefitting from expensive medical interventions.{{Cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121283688|title=Renowned Ethicist Says To 'Set Limits' On Health Care|work=NPR.org|access-date=2018-01-19|language=en}}

Callahan followed up on Setting Limits with a series of books on health care, aging, technology and mortality. These included What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progress (Simon & Schuster, 1990), The Troubled Dream of Life: In Search of a Peaceful Death (Simon & Schuster, 1993), in which he makes a case for "dependency", and argues that human beings are and ought to be a burden to each other;P. 127. According to Callahan, there is a precious and necessary "grace" in the capacity of being dependent from other people, open to someone else's solicitude, and desirous of relying on their strength and comprehension (p. 144). False Hopes (Simon & Schuster & Rutgers University Press, 1998); What Price Better Health? Hazards of the Research Imperative (University of California Press, 2003); Medicine and the Market: Equity vs. Choice (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); and Taming the Beloved Beast: Why Medical Technology Costs are Destroying Our Health Care System (Princeton University Press, August 2009).

Callahan lectured widely on his ideas on health care during this period through the United States and Europe. He was also a professor of psychology at Mercy University.{{Cite web |title=Daniel Callahan, 88, Dies; Bioethics Pioneer Weighed ‘Human Finitude’ |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/science/daniel-callahan-dead.html |access-date=2023-11-22 |website=The New York Times}}

Callahan was an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences; a member of the Director's Advisory Committee, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and of the Advisory Council, Office of Scientific Responsibility, Department of Health and Human Services. He was awarded the Freedom and Scientific Responsibility Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1996.http://www.thehastingscenter.org/team/daniel-callahan-2/ Daniel Callahan He was awarded the 2008 Centennial Medal of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He testified in Congress on stem cell research and other issues.

Callahan was the author or editor of 47 books. In addition to his books on abortion and health care, he is the author of The Tyranny of Survival (1973); Ethics in Hard Times (1982); The Roots of Bioethics: Health, Progress, Technology, Death (Oxford University Press, 2012); and The Five Horsemen of The Modern World: Climate, Food, Water, Chronic Illness, and Obesity (Columbia University Press, 2016). In addition, he's the author of a memoir, In Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics (MIT Press, 2012). Callahan contributed articles to The New York Times, Daedalus, Harpers, The Atlantic, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, The New Republic, Health Affairs, and other newspapers and journals."Daniel Callahan" www.cpbn.org Yale-Hasting program in Ethics and health policy www.cpbn.org/profile/daniel-callahan

In 1954 he married Sidney DeShazo, a notable Catholic feminist who has published under the name Sidney Callahan. They had six children, five boys and one girl, including the writer and editor, David Callahan and the film-maker Peter Callahan.

{{Reflist}}

• [https://www.thehastingscenter.org/news/daniel-callahan-1930-2019/ The Hastings Center: Daniel Callahan, 1930-2019]
• [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/science/daniel-callahan-dead.html Daniel Callahan, 88, Dies; Bioethics Pioneer Weighed ‘Human Finitude,’ New York Times, July 23, 2019]
• [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/daniel-callahan-preeminent-and-probing-bioethicist-dies-at-88/2019/07/23/d9ffbd16-ac92-11e9-bc5c-e73b603e7f38_story.html Daniel Callahan, Preeminent and Probing Bioethicist, Dies at 88, Washington Post, July 23, 2019]
• [https://www.thehastingscenter.org/team/daniel-callahan-2/ Hastings Center bio]
• {{Internet Archive film clip|id=openmind_ep207|description="The Open Mind - A Recipe for Failure: America's Quest for Perfect Health, Part I (September 27, 2007)"}}
• {{Internet Archive film clip|id=openmind_ep208|description="The Open Mind - A Recipe for Failure: America's Quest for Perfect Health, Part II (September 27, 2007)"}}

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Category:American bioethicists

Category:1930 births

Category:2019 deaths

Category:Fellows of the Hastings Center

Category:Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Category:Yale University alumni

Category:Georgetown University alumni

Category:Christians from Washington, D.C.

Category:Philosophers from Washington, D.C.

Category:Businesspeople from Washington, D.C.

Category:Writers from Washington, D.C.

Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers

Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers

Category:American company founders

Category:Mercy University faculty

Category:20th-century American businesspeople

Category:Members of the National Academy of Medicine