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Plenary Address from CBHD's 15th Annual Conference: Healthcare and the Common Good.
 
According to Aleksandr Solzhenitysn,  the coming age of biotechnology will be a trial of our free will.  It will present us with unprecedented loneliness, as the generations are detached from one another and even members of the same generation find it tougher to connect in more than an instrumental way.  It will also make it progressively more difficult to have a clear and calm attitude toward death.  The modern technological project, from its beginning, has been based on the premise that it's reasonable for each individual to identify being itself with him or herself--with me.  So it's success means that it's tougher than ever to identify oneself as merely part of a larger reality--of country, family, nature, or creation, and it's tougher than ever to discover the personal responsibility or virtue required to live with what we can't help but know and do.  This address will focus on one aspect of this trial of our free will, which is the emerging crisis in caregiving.