This book focuses on justice and its demands in the way of providing people with medical care. Building on recent insights on the nature of moral perceptions and motivations from the neurosciences, it makes a case for the traditional medical ethic and examines its financial feasibility. The book starts out by giving an account of the concept of justice and tracing it back to the practices and tenets of Hippocrates and his followers, while taking into account findings from the neurosciences. Next, it considers whether the claim that it is just to limit medical care for everyone to some basic minimum is justifiable. The book then addresses finances and expenditures of the US health care system and shows that the growth of expenditures and the percentage of the gross national product spent on health care make for an unsustainable trajectory. In light of the question what should be changed, the book suggests that overdiagnosis and medicalizing normal behavior lead to harmful, costly and unnecessary interventions and are the result of unethical behavior on the part of the pharmaceutical industry and extensive ethical failures of the FDA. The book ends with suggestions about what can be done to put the U.S. health care system on the path to sustainability, better medical care, and compliance with the demands of justice.

This book focuses on justice and its demands in the way of providing people with medical care. Building on recent insights on the nature of moral perceptions and motivations from the neurosciences, it makes a case for the traditional medical ethic and examines its financial feasibility. The book starts out by giving an account of the concept of justice and tracing it back to the practices and tenets of Hippocrates and his followers, while taking into account findings from the neurosciences. Next, it considers whether the claim that it is just to limit medical care for everyone to some basic minimum is justifiable. The book then addresses finances and expenditures of the US health care system and shows that the growth of expenditures and the percentage of the gross national product spent on health care make for an unsustainable trajectory. In light of the question what should be changed, the book suggests that overdiagnosis and medicalizing normal behavior lead to harmful, costly and unnecessary interventions and are the result of unethical behavior on the part of the pharmaceutical industry and extensive ethical failures of the FDA. The book ends with suggestions about what can be done to put the U.S. health care system on the path to sustainability, better medical care, and compliance with the demands of justice.

Today there is growing acceptance of the idea of physician-assisted suicide. Even Christians are beginning to factor the possibility into their ethical understandings. Would it not be compassionate to acquiesce in a terminally ill patient's request to end it all? This sentiment seems reasonable, even humane. But as Harvard ethicist Arthur J. Dyck shows in this powerful work, there are solid moral and practical bases for the existing laws against assisted suicide in the United States and elsewhere.

Over the course of four interconnected, tightly reasoned arguments, Dyck takes readers from a basic concern for human suffering -- the main focus of those who support assisted suicide -- to the deeper truths of life's inherent worth. Dyck begins by examining the arguments of some physicians, moral philosophers, and theologians for making assisted suicide available. He also discusses the alternative practice of comfort-only care, explaining why it differs morally from assisted suicide and euthanasia. Dyck then explores and defends the moral structure underlying the West's long tradition of homicide law as well as current law against assisted suicide and euthanasia -- laws designed to protect both freedom and human life. Finally, Dyck shows that the moral structure undergirding our system of law is compatible with the views of Christianity, and he points to certain Christian beliefs that provide comfort and hope to those who are suffering, dying, or experiencing the death of loved ones.

Throughout the book, Dyck staunchly maintains that assisted suicide is unacceptable in any and all circumstances. The practice denies terminally ill patients the possibility of recovery and robs them ofthe chance to rethink the meaning of their lives or to achieve spiritual growth. Furthermore, because it undermines the shared moral structure that makes community possible, assisted suicide bodes ill for society as a whole. "Life's Worth" is a must-read for anyone grappling with this hotly debated issue.