L B McCullough, J W Jones and B A Brody, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, 396 pages, £35.00 (hb).

Many volumes have been written in recent years on medical ethics, but comparatively few have been focused especially on the ethics of surgery. Yet surgical practice offers a very sharp focus for many ethical principles. This excellent book is particularly timely because of the current re-evaluation of patients' rights and surgeons' rights, degrees of autonomy and the nature of consent. Of the 39 contributors, a majority are practising surgeons, who are having to make ethical decisions every day in their practice. This means that surgeons reading this book immediately identify …