Description

Robert Veatch is one of the founding fathers of contemporary bioethics. In Patient, Heal Thyself, he sheds light on a fundamental change sweeping through the American health care system, a change that puts the patient in charge of treatment to an unprecedented extent. The change is in how we think about medical decision-making. Whereas medicine's core idea was that medical decisions should be based on the hard facts of science--the province of the doctor--the "new medicine" contends that medical decisions impose value judgments. Since physicians are not trained to make value judgments, the pendulum has swung greatly toward the patient in making decisions about their treatment. Veatch shows how this is presently true only for value-loaded interventions (abortion, euthanasia, genetics) but is coming to be true for almost every routine procedure in medicine--everything from setting broken arms to choosing drugs for cholesterol. Veatch uses a range of fascinating examples to reveal how values underlie almost all medical procedures and to argue that this change is inevitable and a positive trend for patients.

Reviews

"Recommended for academic and public library health collections, this work will instigate many fascinating discussions."--Library Journal

"...[Patient Heal Thyself] is an interesting look at some of the new trends in medicine."--Sacramento Book Review

"The book is a compelling examination of how to catch medicine up with the times, and it is not to be missed."--Doody's

"...a must read for all physicians and medical students..."--JAMA

"Even human subject research is impacted by Veatch's vision of the new
medicine, and the change he recommends is as startling as the call for prescription
abolition."--Ethics

Product Details

304 pages; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-531372-7ISBN10: 0-19-531372-0

About the Author(s)