Standard of Care: The Law of American Bioethics.

American law, not philosophy or medicine, is the major force shaping American bioethics. This is both because law at its best fosters individual rights, equality, and justice and because violation of the legal duty or "standard of care" a physician owes a patient can lead to a malpractice suit. The saw has therefore had two conflicting impacts on medical ethics: the positive effect of eroding paternalism and replacing it with a patient-centered ethic and the negative effect of encouraging physicians to be more concerned with avoiding litigation than doing the "right thing.

Standard of Care explores the fundamental value conflicts confronting medicine and society by examining courtroom resolutions of real bioethical disputes, often of constitutional dimension. This case-based approach, which ranges...