Good Samaritan Medicine with Kosti Psimopoulos | Created In The Image of God 238

Healthcare conversations easily drift into policy, budgets, and systems. Constantine “Kosti” Psimopoulos insists the place to begin is with a wounded traveler on the side of the road. An Orthodox Christian, Harvard‑trained kinesiologist, and bioethicist, Kosti works at the intersection of medicine, spirituality, disability, and ethics—shaping training for scientists and clinicians at Harvard Medical School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and directing the Division of Bioethics at the Orthodox Academy of Crete. For him, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan is not just a Sunday‑school story; it’s a template for reimagining what medicine and public health are for.In this episode, Kosti unpacks why that parable is, in his words, “the crux of all medicine and healthcare.” Jesus answers the question “Who is my neighbor?” by centering the one who stops, sees, and attends to the injured man’s full humanity—body and soul—at personal cost. Kosti contrasts this with modern tendencies to reduce patients to data points, time slots, or cost–effectiveness calculations. Drawing on the legacy of his mentor, the late Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners In Health, he argues that any ethic of care that does not begin with the person in front of us—especially the poorest and most vulnerable—is already off course, no matter how efficient it looks on paper.From there, the conversation widens to global questions of access, AI in medicine, and how disability justice reshapes the way we think about “flourishing.” As a disability advocate and director on the board of the Harvard Alumni Disability Alliance, Kosti emphasizes the principle “nothing about us without us,” insisting that those most affected by medical and technological decisions must have a voice in shaping them. Throughout, he returns to a simple, demanding conviction: if every human being is created in the image (and, in Orthodox language, called to the likeness) of God, then bioethics cannot remain an abstract discipline. It must become a lived, hopeful vision of care that honors dignity, resists dehumanizing systems, and takes seriously Jesus’ call to love our neighbor—whoever is in front of us—well. Get full access to SOOPMedia on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe