Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making.

Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making

Rothman, D. Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making. New York: Basic Books, 1991.

This book explains the revolution that has taken place in patient care, a revolution that has transformed the relationship between doctors and patients and between medicine and society. New players have brought new rules to the bedside. It explores the critical ten years of change, beginning in 1966 with an expose by a Harvard Medical School professor of the scandals in human experimentation and culminating in the case of Karen Ann Quinlan in 1976.

The author takes the reader into the laboratory and then into the examining room, tracing the development of new technologies and...