In this impassioned book, Arthur L. Caplan, one of our foremost writers on medical ethics, calls for an end to cynicism and mistrust in our approach to resolving health care issues. We have lost faith in our ability to see others as our brothers, Caplan writes. Doctors have become enemies, insurers adversaries, medical companies exploiters. Our demand for autonomy, says Caplan, has blinded us to the needs of others and the welfare of society as a whole. In this atmosphere of distrust, reasoned discussion of difficult ethical issues does not flourish, and all too often the courts are left to try to resolve matters that are beyond the reach of law.For Caplan, what has been missing from the public debate of these issues is a perspective grounded in beneficence, compassion, and trust. In this book, he brings this vision to discussions of some of the most pressing issues in medical ethics today including, doctor-assisted suicide, gene therapy, fetal research, new ways of making babies, and access to health care. His essays are crisp, thought-provoking, and certain to help foster better understanding of these issues and the impact they have on our lives. They call for renewed public engagement with bioethical questions. When it comes to deciding matters of how we live and we die, says Caplan, it is time to put aside self-interest and moral cynicism and to see possibility and well as the virtue of being guided by a determination to help one another carry the burdens of illness, disability, and dying.