William F. May, a leading expert on medical ethics, here explores two of today's most crucial tests of the medical covenant - active euthanasia and health care reform.

May begins with an incisive introduction that delineates the covenantal, or relational, nature of the practice of medicine over against the merely contractual view - the quid pro quos of the commercial buying and selling of professional services. In the subsequent chapters, May follows the implications of the medical covenant with respect to the related issues of euthanasia and health care reform. He also provides a covenantal view of professional character and virtue - what virtues we should look for in covenanted physicians and nurses - discusses the limits of the medical covenant in the face of "medical futility," and examines the implications of covenant keeping for the shape of future health care reform.

Author - William F. May

"William F. May is one of our most valuable and sensitive commentators on bioethics and the human condition. In this splendid book he ties together the burning issues of physician-assisted suicide and health care. These two issues have an enormous impact on each other, and May very nicely brings out the connections. A valuable and timely book."

DANIEL CALLAHAN
The Hastings Center


"In his wonderful new book May describes prudence, fidelity, and public-spiritedness as virtues for health care professionals - and he displays them as virtues for moral theologians . . . The continuing conversation about assisted suicide and access to health care will be better if this book gets a wide audience."

- ALLEN VERHEY
Hope College

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