What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progress

Callahan (director, the Hastings Center) asks the right questions (e.g. how much and what kind of health is necessary for a decent life?) and offers thoughtful answers: America's obsession with open-ended medical progress distorts the meaning of good health; prolonging life beyond reasonable expectations causes the neglect of general healthcare, and shortchanges other crucial needs such as education and housing. Persuasive. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Callahan, medical ethicist, co-founder of the Hastings Center, and author of Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (o.p.), makes a complex and largely logic-based argument here for the rationing of health care. In rather formal philosophical style, he proposes a reconstitution of American health care, suggests a "biographical" life span after which intervention would be limited to caring rather than curing, and outlines the changes necessary in the political climate for such an adjustment. His proposal--of a "pyramid" of health care, in which measures that benefit the largest number of people are widely available, and specialized care, such as transplant surgery, is rationed on an individual cost/benefit basis--will be highly controversial. Essential for collections in health, medicine, and the social sciences, but heavy going for most lay readers. Excellent end notes.
- Mark L. Shelton, Columbus, Ohio
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