With his austere sight Hippocrates is gazing into the distance on the front cover of the anthology: is this what medicine is aimed for, is this what mankind really wanted? Does his ethics have any use in the 21^st century; do his ethical norms have any relevance in our societies; do we have any common norms in medicine?

In fact, it is quite unclear what he would have to say us about stem cell research, egg cell trade or pharma industry; or whether he would like our present practice regarding financial conflict of interests in doctor-patient relationship. Would he like our autonomy-centered approach during clinical care in cases when there is clear evidence that respecting patients’ autonomy will harm patients (from a strictly taken medical point of view)? Would he like the fact that medicine and medical research are more and more in the hands of for-profit companies not necessarily having the interests of patients on the top of their priority list? Or would he accept our present practice of abortion given that — unlike in his time — it does not pose a great risk to the life of mothers any more?

 These and similar questions are discussed in Biomedical Ethics. The book covers a very wide variety of topics ranging from legal appropriateness of M’Naghton’s formulation to determine insanity to the problematics of underreporting medical symptoms during long space trips.

 Certainly, one cannot expect a thorough analysis of moral issues on one or two pages. However, a book like that is a very good tool to look into the past and future of medicine. The authors of the book do not give a deep insight of any of the near hundred topics discussed. Instead, a very wide spectrum of problems and inconsistencies in medicine are flashed in short essays allowing us to reflect and analyze by ourselves.

 Reading ethical analyses one is certainly accustomed to the critics of irregularities, abuses and unacceptable phenomena of clinical practice but in this book we can find more: attempts to reflect on limits, failures and irresolvable conflicts in methods of bioethics itself. Questions like ’Is bioethics able to analyze problems in our culturally diverse societies, or those of novel technologies?’ have importance in the book. This honest approach is a great strength of the book.

This well written and well argued intellectual endeavor in medicine and biology is recommended to those who do not need systematic introduction to bioethical issues but want to have a wide picture on what is present bioethics about. I am sure Hippocrates would like this book for its clarity and conciseness even though he would probably disagree with most what the authors of the book say.

© 2008 Imre Szebik

Imre Szebik received his MD and PhD from Semmelweis University of Medicine, Budapest, Hungary and his M.Sc. Specialization in Bioethics from McGill University. He now works as a research associate at the Bioethics Department of the Institute of Behavioural Sciences of Semmelweis Medical University.

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