Andrew Papanikitas, John Spicer CRC Press, 2018, PB, 454pp, ￡40.99, 978-1785230905Back in the Devonian era when I was a medical student, ethics simply did not figure in the curriculum. Shortly before that a new law permitting abortion had been passed; renal transplants were becoming commonplace (cardiac transplants soon to follow); huge advances were improving survival of premature babies; and in vitro fertilisation was around the corner. But there was no felt need for undergraduates to learn about ethics. It wasn’t that ethical questions didn’t arise, but in the paternalistic atmosphere of the time doctors didn’t expect to be questioned, or to have to justify the grounds on which they made decisions. Universal agreement that we all need to understand and grapple with the moral dimension of medicine has forced the subject onto the syllabus everywhere. With that has come increasingly varied ways of examining medical ethics, together with a growing understanding that moral questions abound, and …
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