Customer Reviews

Confessions of a Medicine Man: An Essay in Popular Philosophy (Bradford Books)

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Here is a short, resonant book on a topic that concerns us all: medical ethics.

Alfred I. Tauber is a biochemist and an M.D. (medical doctor). He is also a professor of medicine and a professor of philosophy at Boston University.

Tauber provides us with hard-to-get knowledge: (1) a thoughtful historical overview of the development of twentieth century medicine (1880 to the end of the 1990s), with particular focus on the doctor-patient relationship; and (2) a philosophically sophisticated analytical scheme that enables the reader to assess current developments (crudely: How is my HMO or managed care plan doing?).

Although Tauber subtitles his book "An Essay in Popular Philosophy," the word "popular" is somewhat misleading. The reader entirely innocent of twentieth-century Anlgo-American analyic philosophy as well as of its differences from Continental (European) philosophy, may intially have a bit of hard time following the argument.

Nevertheless, CONFESSIONS OF A MEDICINE MAN is the right book at the right time. Deeply philosophical and factually up-to-the-minute, it provides the compass we need to understand the real causes of the "crisis in medical care" that most average Americans face. For example, Tauber gives an extended--and brilliant--critique of one of those causes: the total acceptance of the idea of the "autonomous self" within the context of the doctor-patient relationship.

For the interested reader, Tauber provides a valuable (& wonderfully readable) section called "Bibliographic Notes." Here the reader can trace out the origins of Tauber's thinking on the key topics covered in the book: changes in American medicine over the past 120 years; the various concepts of "self" that doctors and HMOs adopt and how these varous concepts directly affect the patient's relationship with her doctor; the whole notion of "medical ethics" itself and what its various interpretations may mean to the patient and her family (one of Tauber fresh observations: "medical ethics" is fast becoming a specialty, just like surgery or gastroenterology--and that is just the direction we do NOT want to go).

A serious, needed book, one that challenges American medicine's dangerous and unacknowledged assumptions about exactly who the doctor is and who the patient is. Bravo!