ethiCs & mediCine
It should be mandatory reading for every surgery resident as well as attending surgeon. In addition,
medical students and students of bioethics will gain tremendous insight into the practice of surgery by
working through this book.
Reviewed by Christian J. Vercler, MD, MA (Bioethics, Theological Studies), currently a
fellow in plastic surgery at the Harvard Combined Plastic Surgery Training Program in Boston,
Massachusetts, previously served as a Clinical Ethics Fellow at the Emory Center for Ethics at
Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Design and Destiny: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Human
Germline Modification (Basic Bioethics Series)
Ronald Cole-Turner, Editor. Cambridge, MA and London, England: The MIT Press,
2009.
I S B N 9 - 7 0 8 2 6 5 2 - 5 3 3 0 1 0 ; 2 3 7 PA G E S , C L O T H , $ 5 8 ; PA P E R , $ 2 3
Since the completion of mapping of the Human Genome Project, there has been a proliferation of
books detailing the ethical quandaries that these new genetic technologies pose for us, including issues
such as stem-cell research, cloning, and reproductive technologies. Some of these technologies push
traditional boundaries, force us to think carefully both ethically and religiously in terms of what is or is
not acceptable, and even challenge what it means to be human. Ronald Cole-Turner has written a couple
of excellent books dealing with some of these issues from a religious perspective, and in this volume
he continues to add significantly to the body of scholarly work on the subject. This book contains nine
essays written specifically on the topic of germline modification from the perspective of the Christian
and Jewish faiths, focusing as well on the Catholic tradition. A number of these scholars have published
widely in the area of genetics and ethics already and are quite well-known, including James J. Walter,
Lisa Sowle Cahill, and Celia Deane-Drummond.
This book is well worth reading for anyone, especially scholars, interested in