Raymond J Devettere, Washington DC, Georgetown University Press, 2000, 639 pages, £25.25, $35.

My colleagues and I in Birmingham are always on the lookout for an undergraduate textbook for our medical students, which was why I agreed to review this book. By and large it is pitched at an undergraduate audience and covers many of the areas that one might expect to find in a UK undergraduate medical course (consent, making decisions for the incompetent, end-of-life issues, beginning-of-life issues, research, transplantation and medical genetics). It also has a chapter on managed care, which is less relevant to a UK audience but is interesting none the less. (The case study for the chapter on James Adams who, it is alleged, lost both his hands and feet as a …