This edited volume illustrates the central importance of diversity of human values throughout healthcare. The readings are organised around the main stages of the clinical encounter from the patient's perspective. This introductory chapter opens up crucial issues of methodology and of practical application in this highly innovative approach to the role of ethics in healthcare.

Two general ethical problems in psychiatry are thrown into sharp relief by long term care. This article discusses each in turn, in the context of two anonymised case studies from actual clinical practice. First, previous mental health legislation soothed doubts about patients' refusal of consent by incorporating time limits on involuntary treatment. When these are absent, as in the provisions for long term care which have recently come into force, the justification for compulsory treatment and supervision becomes more obviously problematic. (...) Second, Anglo-American law does not normally allow the preventive detention of someone who may be dangerous but has not actually committed any crime. The justification for detaining a possibly dangerous user of mental health services without his or her consent can only be based on risk assessment, but this raises issues of moral luck. Is the psychiatrist who decides not to take out a supervision order for a possibly dangerous patient with an initial psychotic diagnosis morally at fault if that person harms someone in the community, or himself? Or is the psychiatrist merely unlucky? (shrink)

Anomaly in English law between age of children's permitted consent to treatment and much lower age of criminal responsibility.

Review of Joan Callahan, Reproduction, Ethics and the Law: Feminist Perspectives.

Review of Daniel Callahan, The Troubled Dream of Life.

This volume of articles, literature and case studies illustrates the central importance of human values throughout healthcare. The readings are structured around the main stages of the clinical encounter from the patient's perspective.

Review of Graeme Laurie, Genetic Privacy.

Review of British Medical Association handbook on human rights and doctors.

Review of collection of papers, primarily concerning the Phillipines, edited by H.T. Engelhardt and introduced by E. Pellegrino.

Review of Mary Mahowald, Genes, Women, Equality.