An academic, illuminating assessment of the past, present, and future forms of responsible public health care.
An analysis of how bioethics continue to affect modern American medicine.
“All stages of our lives are caught up in challenging ethical questions raised by modern medicine, health care, public health, and life science research,” write University of Pennsylvania president Gutmann (Identity in Democracy, 2003, etc.) and Moreno (Ethics/Univ. of Pennsylvania; Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans, 2016, etc.) in this astute examination of bioethics as it applies to America’s collective health. As a primer to their insightful discussion, the authors share relevant personal stories. Gutmann discusses her beloved grandmother’s conundrum involving a crucial medical decision, and Moreno discusses the blatant lack of clinical truth telling and “therapeutic privilege” at work during his mother’s ordeal with cancer. These poignant memories illuminate the greater problem of ethics in medicine. The authors’ three-part study begins with a comprehensive history of patient care as it progressed from an atmosphere of unquestioned physician opinion to more current viewpoints, where second opinions and collaborative clinical evaluations are more the norm. Gutmann and Moreno lucidly outline the differences between earlier eras in medicine, when a doctor’s “implicit permission to mislead, if not to lie outright” was openly accepted, and contemporary medicine, where healthier food “choice architecture” and mental health system reforms are just two examples of the radical shift in perception and patient self-empowerment. The authors are unafraid to address more disputable, “slippery slope” issues, many of which remain targeted by polarized political systems. They also respectfully discuss the idea of universal health care, organ donor matching and transplantation, physician-assisted suicide, the surging interest in genetic manipulation, and the deep ethical issues surrounding the neuroscience field. While the authors agree that great strides have been made through more focused attention on ethical clinical care, America falls critically short on achieving a system that is both affordable and accessible.
An academic, illuminating assessment of the past, present, and future forms of responsible public health care.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-87140-446-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
