Abstract
This large text on ‘medical [bio]ethics’ from 1987, is in its third edition. The editors are theologians: there is no biographical information about the chapter authors. It is clearly intended for academical study and likely to interest those in departments of Divinity, Philosophy, Sociology and Law. It is unlikely to be read by many practising doctors or to appear on shelves beyond teaching-hospital libraries.
This book reflects the American genius loci and, presumably, is targeted at readers there. It offers an ill-fitting admixture of styles from overtly populist, even sentimentalist, to that expected of a scholarly book. I found this variability irksome. The book delves deeply into textual resources including, The Hippocratic ὅρκος, the Bible, Karl Barth and even a curious poem entitled ‘Ode on [sic] a Plastic Stapes’. Titles can be misleading: the chapter entitled ‘Daniel’ is a highly personal account of a case of sepsis in a child of that name. I am always wary of ‘samples of one’ in textbooks. As in any multi-author book, some chapters are excellent; others merely add weight rather than gravitas to this already large book.
There are six major sections (§). §1 ‘Methods’, embodies ‘Religion and Medicine’ and ‘Theology and Medical Ethics’. It has a subsection entitled ‘Money and the Medical Profession’ but surprisingly, nothing on medicine and the law, or medical negligence. §1 seemed to me to be an ‘introduction’ that never properly ‘introduced’ but rather gave a selection of authors an opportunity to expatiate upon their particular enthusiasms.
§2 ‘Christianity and the Social Practice of Health Care’ covers important generalities such as poverty, social justice, Christian, Catholic and Anabaptist thought and conviction, but suddenly diverts to an extraordinarily specific subchapter entitled ‘Listening to Women of Colour with Breast Cancer’. One is left looking in vain for material to link all these things together and explain their relationship. ‘Stand-alone’ essays, without any form of ‘concatenation’, make little sense even in a book too exhausting to read from cover to cover.
§3 ‘Patients and Professionals’ contains five chapters. There are useful expositions on ‘Professionalism’, the ‘Doctor-patient Relationship’, ‘Personality’, ‘Transplantation’, ‘Suffering’ and AIDS, but also some rather tendentious, even euphuistic, discourses whose relevance and inclusion must be questioned.
§4 is devoted to ‘Vulnerable Persons’: the elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, persons used as ‘guinea-pigs’ for clinical research, vivisection, cloning and stem cells. These chapters along with §5 and §6 which cover the beginnings and end of life respectively, are more within the province of the physician and surgeon than were the former sections. Perhaps because of this they seem, to this reviewer, more readable, more substantive, more relevant, more instructive, less opaque and less tendentious, with propositions for all sides of arguments aired with greater disinterestedness and equity.
This book contains informative material, interesting accounts and some wise opinions but also much sophistry and sentimentality. In the end, its value will depend upon whether one prefers the variability and superficiality of ‘edited compendiousness’, or to shop around for smaller aliquots of greater depth and originality.