Hippocrates' Maze Ethical Explorations of the Medical Labyrinth

In Nelson's typically inviting and graceful style, the essays collected in Hippocrates' Maze explore the labyrinth of contemporary health care, and arrive at some unusual findings about death and decisionmaking, justice and families, cloning and kinship, and organ donation and intimacy. However, the book's most distinctive conclusions concern bioethics itself: the field is not best seen solely as a source of good advice to doctors, but rather as a way of better understanding our humanity.

James Lindemann Nelson is professor of philosophy and faculty associate at the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences at Michigan State University.