The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics 2015

The story of two doctors, father and son, who practised at very different times, and the evolution of ethics that has a huge impact on healthcare As a practising doctor and long-time member of his hospital's ethics committee, Dr Barron Lerner thought he had heard it all. But in the mid-1990s, his father, an infectious disease physician, told him a stunning story: he had physically placed his body over an end-stage patient who had stopped breathing, preventing his colleagues from performing CPR, even though CPR was the ethically and legally acceptable thing to do. Over the next few years, the elder Dr Lerner tried to hasten the deaths of his gravely ill mother and mother-in-law to spare them further suffering. These stories angered and alarmed the younger Dr Lerner - an internist, medical historian and bioethicist - who rejected physician-based paternalism in favour of informed consent and patient autonomy. Good doctor is a fascinating and moving story of how Dr Lerner came to terms with two very different images of his father: a respected clinician, teacher and researcher who always put his patients first, but also a doctor ready to 'play God'. But the elder Dr Lerner's diaries, which he kept for decades, showed his son how his father's outdated paternalism had grown out of a fierce commitment to patient-centred medicine that was fast disappearing. Did playing God - at least in some situations - really make sense? Did doctors sometimes 'know best'?