Overview

In this impassioned book, Arthur L. Caplan, one of our foremost writers on medical ethics, calls for an end to cynicism and mistrust in our approach to resolving health care issues. We have lost faith in our ability to see others as our brothers, Caplan writes. Doctors have become enemies, insurers adversaries, medical companies exploiters. Our demand for autonomy, says Caplan, has blinded us to the needs of others and the welfare of society as a whole. In this atmosphere of distrust, reasoned discussion of difficult ethical issues does not flourish, and all too often the courts are left to try to resolve matters that are beyond the reach of law.For Caplan, what has been missing from the public debate of these issues is a perspective grounded in beneficence, compassion, and trust. In this book, he brings this vision to discussions of some of the most pressing issues in medical ethics today including, doctor-assisted suicide, gene therapy, fetal research, new ways of making babies, and access to health care. His essays are crisp, thought-provoking, and certain to help foster better understanding of these issues and the impact they have on our lives. They call for renewed public engagement with bioethical questions. When it comes to deciding matters of how we live and we die, says Caplan, it is time to put aside self-interest and moral cynicism and to see possibility and well as the virtue of being guided by a determination to help one another carry the burdens of illness, disability, and dying.

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9780253333582

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Reviews

"""During the last few years there has been a modest backlash against the ethics of unlimited patient autonomy. In this volume Caplan has produced a strong challenge to the emphasis on personal freedom, thus signalling the end of biomedicine's endorsement of a laissez faire, individualist approach to the ethics of health care.""--Journal of Medical Ethics"

Careful consideration of some of the knottier bioethical problems of our times, by the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, who fears that cynicism and mistrust have eroded our ability to see ourselves as our brothers' keepers. Caplan, who recently compiled essays largely from his newspaper columns (Due Consideration, p. 1564), draws here on weightier sources - his articles in law reviews and medical journals as well as some book chapters. The topics he discusses thoughtfully are often the same ones he tackled somewhat pugnaciously in the earlier collection - the ethics of fetal tissue research, reproductive technologies, gene therapy, assisted suicide, organ transplant, etc. Occasionally, whole paragraphs are virtually identical, but overall, Caplan is writing to a more sophisticated readership this time, and he spends more time presenting the issues and developing his arguments. The theme of trust recurs often in these essays. Caplan points out that when the free-market approach drives behavior, as in for-profit managed health care systems, trust, a crucial element in any therapeutic relationship, is hard-pressed to survive. Trust becomes an issue, also, in the question of redefining death: As Caplan points out, mistrust of medicine makes us leery of leaving that task to doctors whose motives we cannot be sure of. To the title question he responds with a firm yes, reminding us that in an age when personal autonomy is much valued, we must not overlook the need to trust, rely on, and help one another. Of the two collections, this is more satisfying, though less lively; more thoughtful, though less provocative; and while timely, less likely to become dated. (Kirkus Reviews)

During the last few years there has been a modest backlash against the ethics of unlimited patient autonomy. In this volume Caplan has produced a strong challenge to the emphasis on personal freedom, thus signalling the end of biomedicine's endorsement of a laissez faire, individualist approach to the ethics of health care. --Journal of Medical Ethics

Author Information

Arthur L. Caplan is Trustee Professor of Bioethics and Director, The Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include If I Were a Rich Man, Could I Buy a Pancreas? (also published by Indiana University Press) and Moral Matters: Ethical Issues in Medicine and the Life Sciences. He has served as a member of President Clinton's Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses and as Chair of the Advisory Panel on Blood Safety and Availability for the Department of Health and Human Services/Food and Drug Administration.

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