Modern medicine suggests omnipotence and an image of life as something that can be perfected at any time. Yet our view of things changes when disease throws us into an existential crisis. Then we seek human answers and feel misunderstood and abandoned in the system of modern medicine. Professor Giovanni Maio, the eloquent advocate of a new culture of medicine, poses fundamental questions in this book that no one can really avoid: Where are the promises of reproductive and transplantation medicine leading us? To what extent can health be made, and to what extent is it a gift? Does "prettier, better, stronger" promise us greater happiness? Why is the question of organ donation more difficult than is suggested to us? Does being old have its own intrinsic value? How can we acquire an attitude towards dying that does not leave us feeling powerless? Giovanni Maio's profound plea for an ethics of prudence opens up hitherto unknown perspectives. In this way we could free ourselves from the belief in perfection and find our way to a new serenity as a condition for a good life
Abstract: Essays in Medical Ethics: Plea for a Medicine of Prudence -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- About the Author -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Meeting in the Petri Dish? -- Reproductive Medicine between Exigency and Engineered Normality -- The Child as a Product: The Logic of Engineering -- The Logic of Depersonalization -- Social Egg Freezing: Family Planning on Ice -- Alternatives to Engineered Reproduction -- Chapter 2. Screen, Test, Weed Out? -- The Double-Edged Sword of Prenatal Diagnostics -- Is the Handicapped Child an Avoidable Risk? -- The Gray Area between Demand and Taboo: Abortion -- Chapter 3. Prettier, Better, Stronger? -- Why Do We Want to Optimize Everything? -- Endangering the Good Life -- Conditions for a Good Life -- Chapter 4. Is Health a Duty? -- Personal Responsibility Is the New Paradigm -- Is Sickness Guilt? -- Health Literacy Is More Attitude than Knowledge -- Chapter 5. The Crisis of Confidence in Organ Donation -- Conditions for Confidence -- Is Brain Death the Death of the Person? -- An Approach to Humane Transplant Medicine -- Chapter 6. On the Value of Age, Beyond the Fitness Imperative -- "So That the Arc of Life May Be Complete"--Age Is a Clear View of Reality -- The Relation of Dependency -- Chapter 7. Living Wills - Are Forms Replacing Dialogue? -- The Living Will -- Autonomy and Care -- Forms Cannot Substitute Relationships -- Chapter 8. Being Able to Let Go. For a New Culture of Dying -- "Self-Determined Death"-Active Euthanasia Is Ethical Resignation -- The Rationalization of Death and the Question of "Meaning" -- What Could Good Dying Look Like? -- Epilogue: Happiness Lies in Our Attitude Toward the World -- Medicine of Prudence -- Where Is the Yardstick? -- Medicine and the Question of the Good Life -- The Chance of Inner Healing Power -- Notes -- Index

Modern medicine suggests omnipotence and an image of life as something that can be perfected at any time. Yet our view of things changes when disease throws us into an existential crisis. Then we seek human answers and feel misunderstood and abandoned in the system of modern medicine. Professor Giovanni Maio, the eloquent advocate of a new culture of medicine, poses fundamental questions in this book that no one can really avoid: Where are the promises of reproductive and transplantation medicine leading us? To what extent can health be made, and to what extent is it a gift? Does "prettier, better, stronger" promise us greater happiness? Why is the question of organ donation more difficult than is suggested to us? Does being old have its own intrinsic value? How can we acquire an attitude towards dying that does not leave us feeling powerless? Giovanni Maio's profound plea for an ethics of prudence opens up hitherto unknown perspectives. In this way we could free ourselves from the belief in perfection and find our way to a new serenity as a condition for a good life