The Woman Who Decided to Die: Challenges and Choices at the Edges of Medicine
Increasingly, recent medical advances blur distinctions between life and death, even between right and wrong in some instances. In an eminently accessible book, medical ethicist Munson pulls 10 morally complex cases from his professional experience, embellishes their bare bones with dialogue and characterization, and deconstructs their ethical intricacies. Should a young mother have the right to suspend all treatment for her fatal disease to spare her family personal and financial hardship? Should a convicted multiple murderer receive the same consideration for a heart transplant as a priest? How much patient confidentiality, if any, does a minor have a right to when consulting a psychiatrist? Is it coercive to deny a voluntary clinical trial participant the option of choosing which intervention, experimental drug or placebo, he or she will take? This is a slim volume despite tackling some thorny issues because Munson cuts right to the hearts of such questions and more, mincing no words and laying bare the hard-to-argue-with ethical points of each. --Donna Chavez