Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

Garden, Rebecca Elizabeth.
Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing (review)
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - Volume 48, Number 4, Autumn 2005, pp. 626-629

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Rebecca E. Garden - Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing (review) - Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 48:4 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 48.4 (2005) 626-629 Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing. By G. Thomas Couser. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2004. Pp. 256. $19.95. Thomas Couser begins his new book by claiming (or rather disclaiming): "This is not a book about bioethics, much less a contribution to that field" (p. ix). Nonetheless, Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing is of great value to bioethics -- specifically in relation to physicians' attitudes as well as their writings about patients. Couser cites the work of seminal figures of biomedical ethics, such as Tom Beauchamp, James Childress, Edmund Pellegrino, and Robert Veatch, to formulate a set of ethical principles of what he self-consciously terms "auto/biography" or "life writing," in other words, texts that represent individuals in ways that may encroach on their right to privacy. Vulnerable Subjects takes on ethical concerns within several genres of life writing, from journalism to popular autobiography to coauthored autobiography (such as the collaboration between Malcolm X and Alex Haley) to case studies, particularly those published by Oliver Sacks. It is within this emerging genre of physician writing marketed for a popular audience that there is perhaps the greatest need for further discussion and limits. The breadth of Couser's book provides a...