Dr. Stuart Youngner is director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and a professor of bioethics, medicine and psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He has written and lectured on physician-assisted suicide, decisions to limit life-sustaining treatment, advance directives, definitions of death, ethics committees and ethical issues in organ retrieval and transplantation. He recently co-directed a national […]

Barbara Yngvesson is a professor emerita of anthropology at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., where she is also the former Dean of the School of Social Science and founding director of the interdisciplinary Program in Culture, Brain, and Development. Her interests include the cultural study of law, family and kinship; theories of identity and belonging; […]

Joan Heifetz Hollinger is the John and Elizabeth Boalt Lecturer in Residence at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. She is a scholar of adoption law, including the Indian Child Welfare Act, and of psychosocial aspects of adoptive family relationships. She is an advocate of adoption law reform and has served on […]

Paul Root Wolpe directs the Center for Ethics at Emory University. He is first Chief of Bioethics for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), charged with safeguarding research subjects and astronauts. He is also a professor in the Department of Psychiatry, director of the Program in Psychiatry and Ethics at the School of Medicine, and […]

Carol MacPherson Kauffman is assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard University Medical School. She founded Positive Psychology Coaches, which helps clients by focusing on their strengths rather than their weaknesses and stresses research-based measurement and exercises. Kauffman is an adherent of the new field of positive psychology and the scientific study of happiness.

Steven Hassan has written several books about cult experiences, including Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs. Hassan lives in the Boston area.

Marty Richards, a geriatric social worker in Port Townsend, Wash., who teaches at the University of Washington School of Social Work, has worked with patients, families and institutions to develop appropriate and meaningful forms of spiritual expression for people with dementia.

Clinical psychologist Cordula Dick-Muehlke works for the University of California’s Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders and has more than 20 years’ experience in the field. She lectures widely on spirituality, elder care and dementia.

Pamala Kennedy is co-author with her husband, Richard, of Suffering in Slow Motion: Help for A Long Journey Through Dementia and Other Terminal Illnesses (Regal Books, 2003). Richard, pastor of a nondenominational church, was diagnosed with fronto-temporal dementia in 1997.