Physician Brody, director of the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences at Michigan State, offers new perspective on and fresh insights into medical ethics. Arguing that the central ethical problem in medicine is the responsible use of power, Brody draws on literary examples as well as the literature of medical ethics. In an unusual opening, he borrows freely from Dostoyevsky's chapter ``The Grand Inquisitor'' in The Brothers Karamazov to present the powerful ``Chief of Medicine'''s views on the proper use of the physician's power. Brody then contrasts this view with that provided by the healer known as ``Snake'' in Vonda McIntyre's short story ``Of Mist and Grass and Sand'' (reprinted in the appendix). Brody sees the physician's power as having three components: Aesculapian, based on knowledge of medicine; charismatic, based on the physician's personal qualities; and social, derived from the physician's status in society. His guidelines for responsible use of this power are that it be exercised to bring about a good outcome for patients; that physicians share power with their patients by informing them, in so far as patients wish, about the nature of their illness and the proposed treatment; and that physicians be sensitive to their patients' sense of powerlessness. Brody applies these guidelines to issues that commonly arise within medical ethics—informed consent, confidentiality, quality of life, etc.—and some less commonly discussed, such as the physician's income. Although his discussion is not comprehensive—ethical questions involving reproductive technology, brain death, medical research, and behavior control, for example, are not explored here—Brody offers a new conceptual framework for analyzing them. Erudite yet accessible: an excellent springboard for discussion of a compelling subject.
Pub Date: Feb. 19, 1992
ISBN: 0-300-05174-3
Page Count: 319
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1991
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
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