Culture of death : the assault on medical ethics in America / Wesley J. Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Wesley J.

Contributor:

Olive R. Morrison Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medical ethics--United States.

Medical ethics.

United States.

Bioethics--United States.

Bioethics.

Ethics, Medical.

Euthanasia.

Medical Futility.

Medical Subjects:

Ethics, Medical.

United States.

Euthanasia.

Medical Futility.

Penn Provenance:

Morrison, Olive R. (honoree)

Physical Description:

xv, 285 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

San Francisco, Calif. : Encounter Books, [2000]

Summary:

When his teenage son Christopher, brain-damaged in an auto accident, developed a 106-degree fever after weeks of unconsciousness, John Campbell asked the attending physician for help. The doctor's response: Why bother? The boy's life was effectively over. Campbell refused to accept this death sentence. He threatened legal action and the doctor finally relented. With treatment. Christopher's temperature subsided almost immediately. Soon he regained consciousness and today he is learning to walk again. This story is one of many Wesley J. Smith recounts in this deeply felt but coolly argued book. Smith goes behind the scenes of our health care system to show how a new, self-proclaimed elite of "bioethicists" threatens patient welfare by undermining the Hippocratic Oath. In the new worldview of bioethics, "death" is being redefined to include "irreversible" coma. The case is being made for organ harvesting from the terminally ill and disabled. Cognitively disabled patients are dehydrated to death by having their tube-supplied food and water withheld. Animals receive greater protection in medical experiments than people. After reading Culture of Death, it will be hard to disagree with Wesley Smith's contention that we stand at a medical and cultural crossroads and that we must embrace a new bioethics of human rights if we are to reassert the sanctity of life.

Contents:

Harsh medicine

Live unworthy of life

The price of autonomy

Creating a duty to die

Organ donors or organ farms?

Protecting animals at the expense of people

Toward a "human rights" bioethics

The payoff from animal research.

Notes:

Includes index.

Notes: p. 249-273.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Presented to the Penn Libraries by Dr. Adrian R. Morrison in honor of his wife Olive R. Morrison.

ISBN:

1893554066

9781893554061

189355449X

9781893554498

OCLC:

45208043