The title's challenging question is only one of the many posed in this wide-ranging examination of doctors and the practice of medicine. Lantos, a physician who describes himself as a professional moralist, is asking how recent developments in the delivery of health care change ``what we should think about the proper response to illness and suffering, how we should train the people whom we empower to respond, and how we should shape the institutions that educate those people and deliver those services.'' To explore these questions, Lantos, a bioethicist at the University of Chicago and pediatrician in a hospital for chronically ill children, tells troubling stories from his own experiences. The role of doctors, says Lantos, has always been partly interventionist (diagnosing and treating) and partly interpretive (understanding and explaining the meaning of illness). The interventionist model, he asserts, has won out. The essence of modern medical practice is alienation, disengagement, and ``a weird equanimity in the face of horrific disease.'' Yet while we insist on the physician as scientist, we still yearn in our hearts for the old humanistic model of physician as shaman/healer. Lantos questions whether a single profession can contain these contradictory notions. We may, he says, be witnessing the creation of a new profession ``driven by science, technology, reductionist ethics, and entitlement economics.'' He is not optimistic about the future of medicine, questioning whether some core of morality or belief will persist underneath the transformations that are taking place. Fiction provides some of the most imaginative responses to the question of what we want doctors to be and do, says Lantos, and he concludes by turning to authors Robertson Davies and Walker Percy, among others, for visions of the challenges facing doctors. A disturbing, often painful examination of a profession in transition. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-415-91852-9
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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