End-of-Life Decisions

End-of-Life Decisions
B. Lehrer, K. Prager, S. Mayer, J. Quinlan, T. Frymer-Kensky

Kenneth Prager

Kenneth Prager is a pulmonologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He graduated from Harvard Medical School, did his internship and residency training at Columbia, and was chief medical resident at Billings Hospital, University of Chicago. Prager spent two years as a physician in the Indian Health Service at Eagle Butte, South Dakota.

Currently, Prager is clinical professor of medicine at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and attending physician at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He has been on the hospital's medical ethics committee since 1992 and has been chairman of the committee since 1994. He has been director of clinical ethics since 1998. Prager lectures on various topics of medical ethics and his articles on these subjects have appeared, among other places, on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. He teaches medical ethics and pulmonology to medical students, house staff and fellows.

Brian Lehrer

Brian Lehrer is the creator and host of "On the Line," WNYC's successful and highly acclaimed daily call-in program covering local, national and international news issues. WNYC is the National Public Radio station in New York City. Lehrer is the former host of "On the Media," a weekly media review program heard nationally on NPR.

Time magazine has called Lehrer's daily show "New York City's most thoughtful and informative talk show." The Daily News calls it "the sane alternative in talk radio." Guests have ranged from political figures such as Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani, to authors and entertainers such as Alice Walker and Al Franken, to junior-high-school students and homeless people.

Lehrer has hosted "On the Line" since its inception in 1989. Before that, he was an anchor, reporter and environment correspondent for the NBC Radio Networks for seven years. He is also an award-winning author and documentary producer. Among his awards are the New York Press Club's prestigious Heart of New York Award, for his documentary on new immigrants and a New York Public Library award for his book The Korean Americans. "On the Media" was named Best Weekly Show by the Public Radio News Directors in 1999. Lehrer was awarded the Associated Press Best Interview Award in June 2000.

Lehrer hosted television programs on WNYC-TV from 1990 to 1995, called "New York Hotline" and "Dialogue With Brian Lehrer," and on WNET-TV from 1996 to 1998, called "Thirteen on the Line."

Lehrer holds master's degrees in public health from Columbia University and journalism from the Ohio State University and a bachelor's degree in music and mass communications from the State University of New York at Albany.

Lehrer lives in Manhattan with his wife and their two young sons.

Stephan Mayer

Stephan Mayer is assistant professor of neurology (in neurological surgery) at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and director of the Neurological Intensive Care Unit at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He is a graduate of Brown University and Cornell University Medical College.

Mayer is the recipient of an American Heart Association Grant-in-Aid Award for support of research on cognitive dysfunction and quality of life after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. He was also the recipient of a National Stroke Association Research Fellowship Award for research focusing on regional cerebral blood flow during the acute stage of subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Mayer's research interests include clinical testing of hypothermia and hemicraniectomy for acute ischemic stroke, neurogenic cardiac disturbances and end-of-life care. He has authored more than 100 original research articles, case reports, review articles and abstract presentations.

Julia Quinlan

Julia Quinlan is chairman of the board of directors and president of the Karen Ann Quinlan Charitable Foundation and co-founder of the Karen Ann Quinlan Hospice. She is the mother of Karen Ann Quinlan, a young woman whose name has become a byword for the legal and ethical dilemmas surrounding the treatment of terminally ill patients.

Quinlan's interest in end-of-life care began in 1975, when her daughter Karen Ann fell into an irreversible coma. Julia and her husband, Joe, went to court to fight for the right to have Karen Ann removed from a respirator and won, in a landmark decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1976. The Quinlan case produced the first judicial ruling in the United States to permit the removal of life-sustaining medical treatment from a permanently incompetent patient. From the fight mounted by Julia and Joe Quinlan have come decisions and actions with far-reaching impact, including the development of the living will and the advance directive and the establishment of ethics committees in every hospital in the United States.

Tikva Frymer-Kensky

Tikva Frymer-Kensky is professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago Divinity School and adjunct professor of biblical law at the University of Chicago Law School. She was formerly director of Biblical studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and visiting professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, McMaster University and the University of Michigan. She received a B.A. from City College of New York in ancient history, a B.H.L. from the Jewish Theological Seminary College in Bible and Talmud, an M.A. in Semitic languages from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Yale in Assyriology.

Frymer-Kensky is a well-known scholar in four distinct fields: the Bible, the ancient Near East, feminist criticism and contemporary Jewish theology. She has written In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (1993) and Motherprayer: The Pregnant Woman's Spiritual Companion (1995). She is also one of the authors of Feminist Approaches to the Bible (1995) and is currently working on Victors, Victims, Virgins and Voice: Re-Reading the Women of the Bible and The Judicial Ordeal of the Ancient Near East. Frymer-Kensky is the English translator of From Jerusalem to the Edge of Heaven, by Ari Elon (1997), and is one of the editors of Gender and Law in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (1998).

Frymer-Kensky is very active in interfaith dialogue. She is a member of the theology panel of the International Conference of Christians and Jews, on the Jewish Scholars panel of the Institute of Christian and Jewish Studies, and part of the task force on pluralism for the World Council of Churches.

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