Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The life-sustaining powers of modern medicine have presented a host of ethical and legal questions to be confronted by patients, families of patients, and medical personnel. Cantor charts the judicial and legislative responses to these problems and offers his own searching analysis. He identifies and endorses a growing consensus that ``the important object of preserving human existence must be tempered by respect for human dignity.'' Patients who are mentally competent should be permitted to make decisions about their own treatment, Cantor believes; family members and doctors should be primarily responsible for determining the best interests of incompetent patients. These questions are closely argued, but the book is accessible to general readers. Highly recommended for most libraries. Jack Ray, Loyola/Notre Dame Lib., Baltimore (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Cantor has written a thoughtful book that treats the legal, moral, medical, and ethical aspects of death and dying. He discusses general topics such as the prerogatives of competent and incompetent patients to reject life-preserving medical care, who should make the critical decisions when the patient is unable to, and how is one to regard defective newborn infants. A central thesis of the book is that ``it is far more humane to relieve the suffering of dying patients and to honor patient self-determination, than to exalt `protection of innocent life' as an all encompassing bar to the withdrawal of life-preserving care.'' A professor of law at Rutgers and the author of numerous law review articles in this general realm, Cantor is well qualified to prepare this insightful discussion of the medical ethics of death and dying. Upper-division and graduate students and general readers.-R.A. Carp, University of Houston