Dr Joseph Santamaria, a devout Catholic with a long and distinguished medical career, is well equipped to offer his wise insights on bioethical and public health issues such as alcohol and drug abuse. His latest publication contains selections from his vast store of published articles and keynote addresses commenting on a wide range of contentious contemporary questions. He tackles controversial topics such as the corruption of science by a combination of ideology and vested interests as in the flawed approaches to the AIDS epidemic, so-called reproductive health and drug abuse. Secularism’s attempt to marginalise religious values from the public square in addressing these problems, in Australia and other Western nations, is also forcefully confronted. Dr Santamaria concludes with a series of reflections on religious topics that he has found challenging. Joseph N. Santamaria, son of Italian migrants who arrived in Australia early in the twentieth century, graduated in 1948 in medicine. He specialised in haematology and oncology and later became the Director of Community Medicine at St. Vincent’s Hospital. He retired from hospital practice at the end of 1988.