Medicine Man: A Young Doctor on the Brink of the 21st Century

Abstract

Few physicians may be examining the moral consequences of the changes being brought about in medicine by the growth of technology. These changes will affect not only physicians but everyone who comes in contact with them. This book will function as a sextant by means of which we can check our present position and examine those consequences. The points of reference are a narrative of the life of a third-year medical student, Aaron Kenigsberg (the present), including family vignettes used to highlight his physician father (the past), and two essays that examine the humanist revolution in medicine (the future). Those, in brief, are the premise and content of this book, which is at various times, but not consistently, witty, interesting, repetitious, disconcerting, and, probably, more likely to appeal to the lay public than to physicians. Many of the important yet timeworn ethical issues in medicine are raised, although without further