Everybody Wants to Go Heaven but Nobody Die: Bioethics and the Transformation of Health Care America

Shockingly, the United States has among the lowest life expectancies and highest infant mortality rates of any high-income nation, yet, as Amy Gutmann and Jonathan D. Moreno show, we spend twice as much per capita on medical care without insuring everyone. A “remarkable, highly readable journey” (Judy Woodruff ) sure to become a classic on bioethics, explores the troubling contradictions between expanding medical research and neglecting human rights, from testing anthrax vaccines on children to using brain science for marketing campaigns. Providing “a clear and compassionate presentation” ( ) of such complex topics as radical changes in doctor-patient relations, legal controversies over babies, experiments on humans, unaffordable new drugs, and limited access to hospice care, this urgent and incisive history is “required reading for anyone with a heartbeat” (Andrea Mitchell).