Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine, Program in Medical Ethics and Humanities, at the University of Utah.

I love writing books.  I’ve authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited at least twenty so far (I think I’ve lost count), including works on philosophical issues in suicide, case-puzzles in aesthetics, ethical issues in organized religion, two collections of essays on end-of-life issues, The Least Worst Death and Ending Life; I’ve been the lead for two multi-authored projects, Drugs and Justice and The Patient as Victim and Vector: Ethics and Infectious Disease, brought out again by OUP with a new Preface on Covid-19; and I’ve won the University of Utah’s Distinguished Research award and received the Rosenblatt Prize, the University’s most prestigious award.   But it’s continuing projects that seem important to me: a huge sourcebook, The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources, published by Oxford University Press, coupled with an online Digital Archive at ethicsofsuicide.lib.utah.edu; Living in What-If Land, exploring real-life thought experiments with normative force, a book still in draft.  Then there’s the slide talk Nuevo Favela: How to live in an Italian hill town and still get to Walmart, about urban design for maximal environmental benefit.  Currently appearing is Sex and the Planet: What Opt-In Reproduction Could Do for the Globe, being published May 28, 2024, by The MIT Press.  This is a book in perpetual progress on large-scale reproductive problems of the globe, including population growth and decline, teen pregnancy, abortion, and male roles in contraception, religious opposition to contraception, and the costs that this immense thought experiment might involve.  Of course, there’s hardly ever enough time to address all the problems one might want to take on, but big new make-the-world-a better-place ideas seem to me what it’s all about.