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Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America

Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America
By Wesley J. Smith

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When his teenaged son Christopher, brain-damaged in an auto accident, developed a 106-degree fever following weeks of unconsciousness, John Campbell asked the attending physician for help. The doctor refused. Why bother? The boy’s life was effectively over. Campbell refused to accept this verdict. He demanded treatment and threatened legal action. The doctor finally relented. With treatment, Christopher’s temperature subsided almost immediately. Soon afterwards he regained consciousness and today he is learning to walk again. This story is one of many Wesley J. Smith recounts in his groundbreaking new book, Culture of Death. Smith believes that American medicine “is changing from a system based on the sanctity of human life into a starkly utilitarian model in which the medically defenseless are seen as having not just a ‘right’ but a ‘duty’ to die.” Going behind the current scenes of our health care system, he shows how doctors withdraw desired care based on Futile Care Theory rather than providing it as required by the Hippocratic Oath. And how “bioethicists” influence policy by considering questions such as whether organs may be harvested from the terminally ill and disabled. This is a passionate, yet coolly reasoned book about the current crisis in medical ethics by an author who has made “the new thanatology” his consuming interest.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #775478 in Books
  • Published on: 2002-06-15
  • Original language: English
  • Dimensions: .1 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 256 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Smith offers a conservative perspective on medical-ethics problems such as failure to provide subjects in research programs with understandable consent forms. He fears that current utilitarian ethicists will create--some have already done so, he says--a hierarchy of human life that would basically be a descendant of Hitlerian eugenics. Doctor-assisted suicide, he believes, must inevitably lead to such a development, and he takes readers step by step on a probable path to it, inspecting each landmark court case (Cruzan, Quinlan, et al.) along the way. He grudgingly concedes that some amelioration with controlled substances be allowed for patients suffering overwhelming pain, but he assumes that current uncontroversial pain control is more effective than many others say it is. On another major flashpoint of ethical dispute, Smith emphasizes the important benefits of research on animals. Furthermore, he makes suggestions for bringing bioethics back to what he feels is a proper philosophic and practical position, one conducive to safe and acceptable lives for both patient and doctor. William Beatty
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Independent Publisher Book Awards 2001
One of the TEN OUTSTANDING BOOKS of the YEAR and BEST HEALTH BOOK.

From the Inside Flap
"In Culture of Death," Wesley Smith, who has done vast research on assisted suicide and euthanasia, describes how many of us have gotten to the point of believing that some lives are not worth living." -Nat Hentoff "Culture of Death promises to be a very major contribution to the discussion." -C. Everett Koop, M.D., Sc.D