Conservatives are on the warpath about this piece from Ezekiel Emanuel, accusing him of endorsing euthanasia and calling for a cap on how old we can get. Their arguments are absurd and based on a misreading of what he actually says. The piece is a personal consideration of the issues that surround aging, including the policy issues that an aging populace raises.

Emanuel, an oncologist and medical ethicist, is a member of Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force, one of 10 medical professionals appointed by the presumptive president-elect to advise him on policy during the pandemic. His essay — “Why I Hope to Die at 75” — ran in The Atlantic in 2014 and is now being (willfully?) mischaracterized and his message distorted to make political hay. This is not surprising, really, given our tendency as humans to look only for evidence that supports our beliefs, and because past history (“Harry and Louise,” death panels).

Lets dispense with the basics first. Emanuel is not calling for death panels or making the claim life should end at 75 — at least, not for anyone but himself. He is not calling for affirmative action toward ending his or any life, and instead wants us to consider the policies we have in place about end-of-life care, DNRs, extreme measures, and the lack of policies designed to help us be healthy through out our lives.

This kind of essay — personal narrative as rumination of ethical issues — and is common among political and ethical philosophers. It offers a way to look at issues and concerns we otherwise might not wish to discuss. It should be taken as a starting point for discussion, not as a manifesto.

But we, as a society, have apparently lost the ability to read fully and to take in complicated material without applying our biases. This is confirmation bias at work. Confirmation bias is the tendency to take in information and make it match our preconceptions. It’s a tendency to see even disconfirming evidence as supporting our ideologies. As a species, we are prone to this. All of us, to varying degrees. Confirmation bias does have its uses (we can discuss), though not when sorting through questions of ethics or politics and policy. When applied to these areas, we end up in bunkers, paralyzed by stereotyping and distrust. We end up stripping complex ideas of their context, of their nuance.

I’m not endorsing Emanuel’s arguments. Some of em what he says intrigued me. Some of what he says I find disturbing. I think that’s the point. Rather than using him to attack Biden and did COVID task force and dismiss it out of hand, engage the specifics. Read and digest this 2014 Atlantic essay. Look at his other statements and his other writings from other contexts. Engage his arguments. Be present and a part of the debate he wants to start.

But we have to start by actually reading what he says on his terms, and not through our own distorted lenses.