The Woman Who Decided to Die: Challenges and Choices at the Edges of Medicine Book

As someone who loves contemplating ethical questions and works in a helping profession, I truly enjoyed this book. Munson, a bioethicist, describes several ethical situations he encountered in medicine. Each narrative is followed by a dissection of the various factors leading to an ethical ruling. Munson describes dilemmas such as whether a doctor should allow, or even facilitate, a patient's death, consent to psychiatric treatment when the person's decision-making abilities are in question, whether to put a convicted murderer at the top of the list for an organ transplant, etc., etc.

I decided to withhold the fifth star because, like many works of non-fiction, the book did start to feel repetitive after a while, especially since many of the stories focused on death and euthanasia when I would have liked a broader range of ethical dilemmas. Although I don't know for sure, since I'm not a medical doctor, I imagine that a wide variety of situations come up beyond whether or not to cooperate with someone's wish to die, or vice versa.

With that said, I found this book provocative and very interesting and would recommend it to anyone who, like me, is fascinated by ethical dilemmas.