Yale Class of '52
Artists & Authors

Dan was the co-founder and President of the Hastings Center, a research organization devoted to ethical issues in medicine, biology and the environment. He retired from administrative responsibilities in 1996, but remains as the Director of the International Program at the Center. During the four decades as President he found time to be the sole author of nine published books, as well as editing nearly thirty more. He credits Yale with the start of this love of writing, viewing it as a pleasure to turn to in the midst of more mundane activities. His aim has been to make his writing accessible to a general educated audience, eschewing the impression while getting his Ph.D. at Harvard that philosophy was a technical subject for experts.

Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (Macmillan 1970) was a comprehensive examination of abortion as an ethical and social issue, written before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, but when a number of states had legalized abortion. Many feminists praised his pro-choice stance but recoiled at his argument that the morality of it should be a matter of public discourse, not just private decisions.

Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society (Simon & Schuster 1987) was an attempt to deal with the question of how our society by 2020 will be able to pay for the health care of the elderly. This book won Dan a place as one of three Pulitzer Prize finalists in 1987. False Hopes: How America's Quest for Perfect Health is a Recipe for Failure (Simon & Schuster 1998) an extended argument that our American commitment to unlimited medical progress is turning out to be unaffordable and inequitable.

A new book, The Research Imperative, due out later in 2002, asks what kind of public and private biomedical research is most conducive to a sustainable medicine.

“Semi-retired from a reasonably successful career as an architect in 1997, I began a follow-up life that winter when I started painting. Since that day I've not looked back. I've shifted my attention (and fascination) almost completely to the art of oil painting. Subject work deals mostly with figurative works depicted fairly realistically.

Ironically, perhaps almost perversely, the architectonic, the geometric, or the volumetric sensibilities characteristic to building design have not carried over into my painting. There is a predominant interest in, and concentration on, the incredibly variable human figure, facial expression, hands, and gestures, and capturing all these forces responding to various situations.”

There's no feeling like successfully breathing life onto a flat canvas with a brush and a bit of pigment. Well, maybe except for doing similarly with an empty site and a few bricks, boards, nails and mortar.”

Joseph F. Callo
Yale 1952

Joe retired as a rear admiral from the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1989. His career as an author, TV scriptwriter, and producer has won him numerous awards, including the Peabody Broadcasting Award and a 1998 Telly Award. He divides his time between Kansas City, Missouri and New York City.

Legacy of Leadership, Lessons from Admiral Lord Nelson (1999) was written because Nelson's life contains clear lessons to any situation where leadership is important. This personal leadership analysis catapults a truly astonishing naval career from its historical setting of square-rigged ships into today's ultra-tech world. Succinct examinations of five major sea battles show how Nelson matched his tactics to the larger strategic issues of the global struggles between Britain and France of his time.

Nelson Speaks: Admiral Lord Nelson in his own Words (2001) after two centuries of biographies and analysis of the man who shaped the course of history from the decks of his ships, readers can now better understand his piercing insights and provocative opinions through his own words. While conventional biographies develop the subject from the outside, this presentation of Nelson's thoughts creates a candid self-portrait. This book was written because Nelson's own words could be more instructive now than they were at the onset of Britain's maritime dominance.