Ethics of Health Care: A Guide for Clinical Practice Book

Veatch is highly iconoclastic. In fact, at times the book lulled me into thinking he was being satirical--I was waiting for him to add that we should eat the excess babies when I realized he was being perfectly serious. His ideas have merit; the recognition that all decisions we make in medicine are heavily value-laden is important. However, his philosophy also seems reactionary. It is the pendulum swinging from paternalism to unrestricted libertarianism. As such, it denies the value and moral agency of medical providers' knowledge and standing as human beings, respectively. There must be a middle ground, with a sound ethical norm, couched in a reasonable set of "know-able" concepts, that does not require an impossibly administratively complex revamping of the medical system or an impossibly chaotically individualized standard of communication among patients and providers. Among the concepts not introduced in the book, but probably worthy of exploration, is the role that basic health literacy should play in the establishment of transparent norms for understanding medical biases towards being interventionist and for respecting both agents in communication.

Personal note: see notes in "Veatch Basics of Bioethics."