Restoring Humane Values to Medicine

Book excerpt: Does reading poetry make you a better clinician?Can euthanasia be understood in terms of the meaning of a life?What is the moral and existential significance of life-threatening experiences? Australian surgeon, poet, philosopher and humanist, Miles Little addresses these and other fascinating questions in this collection of papers.Miles Little is one of the most original and engaging voices in contemporary medical ethics and philosophy. He ranges across the sciences and the humanities, creating hybrid fields of inquiry ("ethonomics"), interrogating orthodoxies and engaging different fields of human knowledge and experience.The papers in this collection were chosen by his readers, who also engage here with Miles Little's work in a short commentary that follows each paper. The range of the commentators reflects the breadth of Little's appeal and influence: academics and clinicians, philosophers and ethicists, novelists, public health practitioners and cancer survivors - each reflects, agrees or disagrees.Like Little's work itself, this Reader is an open and unfolding dialogue that includes many different perspectives.Commentators include: Murray Bail, Robin Downie, Nancy Dubler, Stan Goulston, Jill Gordon, Paul Komesaroff, Steve Leeder, Paul McNeill , Gavin Mooney and Bernadette Tobin