Confessions of a Medicine Man : An Essay in Popular Philosophy

Alred Tauber probes the ethical structure of contemporary late-1990s medicine in an argument accessible to lay readers, healthcare professionals, and ethicists alike.

Through personal anecdote, historical narrative, and philosophical discussion, Tauber composes a moral portrait of the doctor-patient relationship.

In a time when discussion has focused on market forces, he seeks to show how our basic conceptions of health, the body, and most fundamentally our very notion of selfhood frame our experience of illness.

Arguing against an ethics based on a presumed autonomy, Tauber presents a relational ethic that must orient medical science and a voracious industry back to their primary moral responsibility: the empathetic response to the call of the ill.