(book) Review - Malignant - Ethics

Review - Malignant - Ethics

 Review - Malignant
Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer
by Rebecca Dresser (Editor)
Oxford University Press, 2012
Review by Jacqui Poltera
Oct 16th 2012 (Volume 16, Issue 42)

"

One of the shortfalls of applied ethics is that it infrequently draws on the first-personal experience of people facing complex ethical decisions to inform ethical theory. Healthcare ethics and bioethics are no exception. For the most part, ethical conclusions are drawn from considering scenarios and case-studies from the third-person perspective. Medical students and ethicists are typically taught to weigh up the ethical merits of a case without a detailed understanding of how or what each person involved is thinking and feeling. The problem with this method is that it can underemphasize ethical complexity in decision-making, particularly when it comes to joint decision making between patients, clinicians and loved ones, and to deciding how we ought to live and treat each other in the face of serious illness.

Malignant Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer redresses this deficit by drawing together the first-personal accounts of a range of medical ethicists from different backgrounds that have experienced cancer as patients and /or as carers. Dan. W Brock, Rebecca Dresser, Norman Frost, Arthur W. Frank, Leon R. Kass, Patricia A. Marshall, and John A Robertson recount their experiences in a refreshingly candid way. This is an accessible and thought provoking collection that sheds light on novel aspects of the experience and ethics of cancer. The combined papers, edited by Rebecca Dresser, are written in an engaging storytelling manner that blends professional ethical analysis with first-personal accounts of the lived experience of cancer.  This method of writing is part of what makes it an important book for cancer patients, carers, health professionals and medical ethicists alike. 

Another strongpoint of this book is it tackles features of people’s cancer journeys that typically do not receive much attention in either public messages about cancer or in academic discussions about the ethics of treating seriously ill people.  More specifically, in recounting their own experiences, the authors highlight the centrality of ethics to people’s daily lives....