Book Review: Tom Koch, “Thieves of Virtue: When Bioethics Stole Medicine

Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2012; 352 + xx pp Guest Post by Robert Rivers (PhD student, Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies Program, University of British Columbia) Who benefits presenting scarcity as a natural state in health care? Who killed the Hippocratic Oath? Why are doctors portrayed as paternalistic? Why has patient care become a secondary concern to […]

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Passive Euthanasia: A Cri de Cœur

Don’t worry: this isn’t another instance of me yammering on about the right to die or the right to induce death. I’ve recently received a parcel; it contained a copy of this book by Leanne Bell, which happened to fall open at p 204.  On that page, you’ll find this passage: Active euthanasia involves a deliberate act […]

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Henrietta Lacks and “Enchanting Rhetoric”

Note: There’s a couple of errors of interpretation in this post.  I’m not going to re-write it, because I wrote what I wrote, and it’s in the public domain, and I don’t think it’s all that dignified to pretend that one never makes blunders; it’s better to acknowledge them, take the hit, and move on. […]

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