Review by Choice Review
Loewy, a practitioner and teacher of internal medicine at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, proceeds from broad reflections on uncertainty in clinical practice and physician-patient relationships to issues in medical ``micro-distribution'': AIDS; executions; organ donation; abortion; age; dementia; do-not-resuscitate orders; and withholding food. His approach is humane, reflective, rich in literary and historical allusions, broadly utilitarian. Loewy offers ``a physician's approach'' to bioethical questions; he provides very little in the way of systematic ethical analysis, as exemplified in H. Tristam Engelhardt's The Foundations of Bioethics (CH, Jun '86) or Robert Veatch's A Theory of Medical Ethics (CH, May '82). Nor does he provide much in the line of specific information, case studies, or value analyses related to the particular issues treated. Thus, the work is of only marginal interest for bioethics as a philosophic discipline. There are extensive references for all 14 essays and a concise index. Impressively bound, the book appears to have been photocopied from a typescript. Not recommended for undergraduate or general libraries.-H.J. John, Trinity College, D.C.
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
