Volume 39, Number 5 · March 5, 1992
Rationing Life
By David J. Rothman
Who Lives? Who Dies? Ethical Criteria in Patient Selection
by John F. Kilner
Yale University Press, 359 pp., $29.95; $15.00 (paper)
Strong Medicine: The Ethical Rationing of Health Care
by Paul T. Menzel
Oxford University Press, 234 pp., $29.95
What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progress
by Daniel Callahan
Simon and Schuster, 318 pp., $19.95; $9.95 (paper)
Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society
by Daniel Callahan
Simon and Schuster, 256 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Just Doctoring: Medical Ethics in the Liberal State
by Troyen A. Brennan
University of California Press, 287 pp., $34.95
Patrimony: A True Story
by Philip Roth
Simon and Schuster, 238 pp., $19.95; $10.00 (paper)
Someday
by Andrew H. Malcolm
Knopf, 296 pp., $22.00
Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying
by Derek Humphry
The Hemlock Society/distributed by Carol Publishing, 192 pp., $16.95
Must health care be rationed? Medical schools and research centers frequently hold conferences on such questions as 'Is rationing inevitable?' and many new books address the question posed by the philosopher John Kilner in his book Who Lives? Who Dies? The inquiries are usually of three kinds. One addresses the narrow issue of which patient should get the last available bed in the intensive care unit, or the single available donated, heart, or the only remaining respirator. The dilemma arises over whether to choose the candidate who is first in line, the youngest, the most prominent, or the richest, to name only some of the criteria that are now used.
Review, 5952 words
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