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Author: John Banja, Ph.D.

John Banja is a Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and a medical ethicist at the Center for Ethics at Emory University. He also directs the Section on Ethics for the Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Emory. Dr. Banja received a doctorate degree in philosophy from Fordham University in New York and has taught and lectured on topics in medical ethics throughout the United States. He has authored or coauthored over 175 publications and has delivered over 800 invited presentations at regional, national, and international conferences. He currently serves as the Editor of the American Journal of Bioethics-Neuroscience, the leading scholarly journal in the field of neuroethics. Dr. Banja has conducted research or educational projects with numerous federal and private organizations including the NIH, the American College of Surgeons, The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, The National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research, the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management, and the Georgia Hospital Association. He is a former board member of the Commission for Case Manager Certification as well as the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery. His research interests include topics in neuroethics and ethical dilemmas occurring in clinical and translational research. His most recent book, Medical Errors and Medical Narcissism, was published by Jones and Bartlett Publishers in 2005.

Disability, Humility and the Self: Some Humanistic Perspectives

In this important essay, Dr. John Banja explores the universal experience of how disability alters our perspective of life and of the meaning that we place on our lives.  He utilizes the dialogue within both Edson’s Wit and Jean Dominique Bauby’s autobiographical narrative The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to ask “[when] confronted with such an assault on one’s identity, how do we re-imagine ourselves after disability strips our previous perceptions of who we are, and what gives our lives meaning?”