Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer
"Rebecca Dresser's idea for a book on cancer was an inspired one. In bringing together a group of people from the field of bioethics with personal experience of cancer, as survivors or caretakers, we see in moving detail what it is like to wrestle with the disease. It will offer those with cancer or caring for those with it uncommon insight and wisdom. If one has to think about or deal with the disease, one can hardly ask for more." - Daniel Callahan, The Hastings Center"The authors in this volume have important things to say about sickness and medicine, from which we can all learn. If you had any question about whether sickness and medical care are fundamentally personal, related to who the sick person is, this readable and interesting book will drive that point home. At the same time, they show that the sick are never sick in isolation, but alongside others whose fates are intimately entwined. Intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful." --Eric Cassell, MD, Emeritus Professor of Public Health, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and Adjunct Professor of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University"Dresser and her colleagues raise several challenging questions on the ethical and social dynamics of cancer care in the twenty-first century. In prose rich in scholarly contemplation, the book applies personal experiences to broaden the conversation of ethical health care for cancer patients. Most important, Malignant bears witness to a critical advance in oncology that may help both its practitioners and those stricken with the disease." -- Howard Markel, he George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan,The New Republic"The book applies personal experiences to broaden the conversation of ethical health care for cancer patients. Most important, Malignant bears witness to a critical advance in oncology that may help both its practitioners and those stricken with the disease." -- Howard Markel,The New Republic"Malignanthas as its subtitle,Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer. They do but the conceptual weapons they know best how to use in their scholarly work prove very ineffective against this very personal opponent. If there is a confrontation in these pages it is one that cancer forces by requiring a close examination of each author's experience, relationships, hopes, disappointments, and limits." -- Arthur Caplan,The Lancet"Medical practitioners and health sciences students will find this unique and moving book useful for understanding why patients act they way they do. It is an important addition for medical school libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals/practitioners." -- A. W. Klink, Duke University,CHOICE"There is much that can be learned from this collection of personal moments shared, reflective analyses, and narrative inquiry by patients, their families, health care providers,and bioethicists. This work is an important contribution to bioethics and provides insights that would be helpful not only in the teaching of ethics to medical students but alsofor clinical ethics, where decisions need to be made in difficult clinical situations and interaction with a patient is of paramount importance." -- The American Journal of Bioethics