Richard M. Zaner

By discussing the difficulties involved in six separate medical cases involving end-of-life care and questions of ethics in relation to medical treatment & understanding, Zaner's essays offer a careful view into some of the most difficult moments that individuals can face. The honesty and detail offered with each page of the collection are impressive, and all the more so because Zaner is honest about his own uncertainties and downfalls, and about the moments where uncharted territory has become a virtual battleground of science vs. faith, and the human spirit vs. instinct and learning. For most (if not all) adult readers, the collection will bring up difficult and personal considerations related to their own loved ones, but Zaner's discussions are so careful that the heart of the book is far less painful than might be expected.

Simply, the questions and considerations here are ones to be thought about and considered because there are no easy answers, and progressions in medical science can only ensure that they be faced more often, and with more at stake. For readers who are ready to consider medical ethics in a careful manner and think about what life means when, to all appearances, it has nearly left, Zaner's book will be welcome. Without doubt, it is necessary, difficult as the discussions may be.

Absolutely recommended.… (mais)

Not a review, just an intriguing epigraph:

"For in the immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and centrally and simply, without either dissection into science, or digestion into art, but with the whole of consciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can: and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is."

- James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men… (mais)