Culture of Death: The Assault on
Medical Ethics in America
Wesley J. Smith
When his teenaged son Christopher, brain-damaged in an auto accident, developed a 106-degree fever following weeks of unconsciousness, John Campbell asked the attending physician for help. The doctor refused. Why bother? The boy’s life was effectively over. Campbell refused to accept this verdict. He demanded treatment and threatened legal action. The doctor finally relented. With treatment, Christopher’s temperature subsided almost immediately. Soon afterwards he regained consciousness and today he is learning to walk again.
This story is one of many Wesley Smith recounts in his groundbreaking new book, The Culture of Death. Smith believes that American medicine “is changing from a system based on the sanctity of human life into a starkly utilitarian model in which the medically defenceless are seen as having not just a ‘right’ but a ‘duty’ to die.” Going behind the current scenes of our health care system, he shows how doctors withdraw desired care based on Futile Care Theory rather than provide it as required by the Hippocratic Oath. And how “bioethicists” influence policy by considering questions such as whether organs may be harvested from the terminally ill and disabled.
This is a passionate, yet coolly reasoned book about the current crisis in medical ethics by an author who has made “the new thanatology” his consuming interest.
This book can be borrowed from the Edmonton Prolife office or from the Edmonton Public Library or from the University of Alberta Libraries. An excerpt from the first chapter can be read online.
Or you can buy it from Amazon by following this link.
Wesley J. Smith is also the author of Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. You can find his blog here.
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