History of pain

For this welcome development professional philosophers who are interested in bioethics are to some extent responsible. Professor Brock's republication of fourteen of his own essays on bioethics collectively constitute a "state of the art" notation, phrasing fundamental questions but offering answers that can at present, be no more than provisional. In a very useful Introduction, Brock comments briefly on each of his fourteen essays which, when examined in detail, prove to be rough going for readers who are not familiar with the language and usage of the professional philosopher. The author touches at least briefly on virtually every aspect of life and death; but chapters 4 to 8 (Part II) are most likely to be of special interest to the clinician. The key chapter is the sixth which, as its title implies, deals with 'Death and dying'-all aspects-as encountered by both the physician and the philosopher at the bedside. Throughout, emphasis is on the right of the properly informed patient to weigh the value of therapeutic measures and to accept or refuse according to his own criteria. But the vexed and fundamental matters of the moral differences between allowing to die and actual killing by direct action remain unsettled. The fact is, according to Brock: "Foregoing life support is permissible, but physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia are forbidden". Answers may one day emerge from the great mass of medical and legal deliberation and precedent on the topics mentioned (especially euthanasia), but that day is not yet clearly at hand. "Philosophical bioethics", according to Brock, "is barely beyond infancy". Space hardly permits detailed comment on Brock's Part III, in which he deals at length with the supremely difficult problem of bringing philosophical bioethics into effective contact with public policy. In this complex arena fall the problems of determining the quality of life, assigning public resources to some patients but not to others depending, among other things, on the age of the patient and his or her economic situation. This, the author's human capital approach, lacks "any plausible moral basis". To which he adds, as a central thesis, There is deep conflict between the goals and constraints of the public policy process and the aims of academic scholarly activity in general and philosophical activity in particular ... When philosophers move into the policy domain, they must shift their primary commitment from knowledge and truth to the policy consequences of what they do. Professor …