Playing God: The New World of Medical Choices

Thomas Scully, former dean of the University of Nevada School of Medicine, and his coauthor wife merit high praise for this guide. Referring to actual cases, they illustrate a patient's right to decide on medical treatments and to demand facts on which to base such decisions. The text contains advice on many bewildering aspects of health-care ethics: malpractice, unwarranted surgery, drug- or alcohol-impaired doctors, etc. There is also vital information on advantages and disadvantages of surrogate motherhood and other options for childless people. Readers find out, as well, how to execute a Living Will (a formal refusal of artificial methods to keep a brain-dead person alive), to prepare a consent for organ donations and like matters of legal concern. The authors seem to have left no questions unanswered in a manual that no one should be without. First serial to Redbook and Glamour. (January)