Some Choice: Law, Medicine, and the Market

I am fortunate enough to actually have been taught by the writer of this book, Professor George Annas, who is also the chair of the Health Law Department at the School of Public Health at Boston University. Besides being a prolific writer, the man is gifted with an incredible legal mind and the soul of a humanist. As such, he is well equipped (and well regarded in the fields of health law and medical ethics) to briefly discuss the challenges, ethical dilemmas, and basic problems in a number of contemporary topics that currently provide us with no clear answers. The book provides a good overview of some of these topics, like tobacco control, medical research involving human beings, the true extent of choices involving one's "right" to die, and AIDS and TB. The true shock (which reads more like an "X Files" storyline than anything real--I hope) is Chapter 13: "Our Most Important Product." The book price is worth getting just this one chapter; I won't ruin the surprise for you, but let's just say that, if you're like me, after reading this chapter you'll be running periodic Internet searches to see if anything related to this story comes up. (And wondering if the FBI, CIA, or other governmental agency is watching my searches.) Read it for yourself and then decide: Truth? Fiction? Is the Truth stranger than Fiction? As always, a thoughtful "kick in the butt" by Professor Annas, who consistently and skillfully forces us to face the difficult issues plaguing our medical research and technological advances.

American culture is unique in its emphasis on individual liberty and freedom of choice. In "Some Choice" George Annas brilliantly shows how these values have taken precedence over others as important, for example, equality, justice and solidarity, and how the liberty rhetoric has undermined the very essence of that which it intends to promote.