About me
I am a retired physician (MD) and board certified neurologist in Portland, Oregon. My first interest was neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, cerebellar degeneration, and Alzheimer’s disease. Later I became more focused on ethics and philosophy of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and brain death. I am also perpetually studying philosophy and philosophical issues in medicine, neuroscience, and society.
As a neurologist, while taking care of people who are slowly losing their neurologic and cognitive capacities, slowly progressing to the end of life, often going through severe decline of awareness and consciousness for years, my interest shifted to philosophy and ethics. After studying humanities in Reed college with MA degree, I have been a senior scholar at the Center for Ethics in Health Care at Oregon Health and Science University. Until Covid-19 changed everything in schools and health care systems, I was a voluntary faculty at OHSU, teaching students in ethics and relate field.
My previous interests include bioethics of the refusal of blood by Jehovah’s Witnesses, and more recently retrospective diagnosis of a famous historical figure. I am a personal fan of Socrates, and I love him so much that I wrote a paper on the retrospective diagnosis of his sad fate.
I was born and raised in Japan, graduated from the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Medicine, in 1974. I had intern and residency trainings, first in the University of Tokyo hospital, and later in the University of Massachusetts in Worcester, MA. I also received Master of Arts degree from Reed College. I worked as a neurologist in Kaiser Permanente Northwest region until my retirement.