By Arthur Kaplan
Book Review published in The Lancet
Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer by Rebecca Dresser
Originally published April 14, 2012
Malignant is a book that I am sure will catch the eye of many readers of this journal. Not because it is a collection of essays by people who have either had cancer or who cared for loved ones who did. Many books cover that ground. Not because it is a collection of essays by distinguished American bioethicists, including Norman Fost, Leon Kass, Daniel W Brock, and Rebecca Dresser. There are lots of bioethics collections authored by eminent scholars around too. This book will command attention because the bioethicists writing the essays are also the very same people who had the cancer or helped loved ones who did.
The book thus raises the obvious question—in facing cancer, did the contributors fare any better for all their scholarly expertise in bioethics? Or, did cancer prove to be the great leveller, leaving all who talk for a living about moral theory and normative argument tongue-tied as each learned what the real world of serious sickness is all about? Did careers of offering opinions to others in and out of health care about how to behave, speak, and respond make a whit of difference to the personal experience each of the contributors had in their own intimate struggles with cancer?