Hippocrates’ Maze: Ethical Explorations of the Medical Labyrinth

To contain the Minotaur, the ancient artificer Daedalus crafted a maze so intricate that it bewildered even its maker. Contemporary medicine is every bit as bewildering, so much so that a new and distinct field, bioethics, has been created to help professional caregivers, patients and their families navigate their way through it. The essays collected in this work explore the labyrinth of contemporary health care and arrive at some unusual findings about death and decision-making, justice and families, cloning and kinship and organ donation and intimacy. However, the book’s 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.