Battin MP, Lipman AG, eds. 360 pages. New York: Haworth Pr; 1996. $49.95. ISBN 1560248149. Order phone 800-342-9678.

Field of medicine: Medical ethics.

Format: Hardcover book.

Audience: Practitioners, end-of-life specialists, ethicists, public policy specialists, and health lawyers.

Purpose: To provide a rational approach to an emotional issue and to truly consider the strengths and weaknesses of arguments about assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Content: The first of four sections examines ethical and institutional policy issues and is composed of chapters by a physician-ethicist, a pharmacist, and nurses. The second section focuses on the dying patient, with particular attention to AIDS. The third section examines legal and regulatory issues in euthanasia and assisted suicide, and the fourth contains five chapters on drug use in the practice of assisted suicide. The book concludes with two unique and helpful features: 1) reprints of position statements and commentaries from the major professional organizations and 2) case discussions.

Highlights: The thoroughness and balance of the chapters in the first section are outstanding. The roles of nurses and pharmacists in the public policy or the private practice of euthanasia are often neglected, but not here. Furthermore, it is helpful to have analysis of arguments on all sides of the debate collected in one place.

Limitations: In the second section, I found myself wanting more examination of concerns about improving the care of the dying. Perhaps the focus of the book on the use of drugs to bring about death precluded an equally exhaustive focus on our ethical duties to dying patients, which, to my mind and many others, should take precedence. The section on legal issues is mostly up to date, missing only the most recent decisions of the 2nd and 9th Circuit Courts and the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the appeals of those rulings.

Context: Although the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the debate about assisted suicide and euthanasia, it does not contain contributions from the fields of sociology, anthropology, and theology, where this debate has also fulminated. Even so, all of the authors are careful to treat arguments for and against the positions they take, and many of these arguments arise from deep professional, sociological, cultural, and religious convictions. Other books present an argument for one side or the other, but none collect so many of the concerns in one place and amplify them by including the perspectives of key disciplines other than medicine.

Reviewer: David Thomasma, PhD, Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, Illinois.

Commentary: Edited by two authorities in the fields of euthanasia and assisted suicide (Battin) and pain control and hospice (Lipman), this book is a virtual compendium of objections to, cautions about, and support for the practice of using drugs to achieve death. In keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of the book, contributors include physicians, nurses, pharmacists, lawyers, lay persons, and ethicists. Neither the editors nor many of the contributors agree about the morality of public policy implications in helping patients die, but all share a commitment to elucidating the issues involved by dispassionately examining as many arguments as possible. This is crucial for developing a sound policy toward caring for the dying in a technological world. At the root of the debate are two competing views of humans and their place in families and society: the vision of a person as a largely autonomous entity with full rights and responsibilities and a more contextual view of a person as an entity whose rights are enmeshed in responsibilities stemming from a network of family, societal, and religious values.