Issues in Biomedical Ethics

School Library Journal

Gr 7-10-A look at differing opinions on some of the longest lasting controversies in medicine. How limited health care resources should be allocated, physician-assisted suicide, the use of animals in medical research, and genetic engineering are discussed. The full range of opinions common to these topics is expressed with a substantial use of quotes. These different points of view originated in books and periodicals published in the late 1980s and 1990s. Ethicists, physicians, researchers, and people with strong emotional investment in promoting or halting a particular biomedical activity all contribute to the debates. These issues are discussed in many other works including Margaret O. Hyde and Elizabeth H. Forsyth's Medical Dilemmas (Putnam, 1990; o.p.), which lacks the friendlier format and eye-relieving black-and-white photographs and cartoons of this title. The same is true of Biomedical Ethics (Greenhaven, 1994) and Daniel Jussim's Medical Ethics (Messner, 1990). While no one book can provide the last word on such volatile issues, Yount's inclusion of an annotated list of organizations to contact and lengthy bibliography offer a number of extended research suggestions.-Ann G. Brouse, Big Flats Branch Library, NY