Book Review: Choices in Palliative Care: Issues in Health Care Delivery

October 10, 2007

Singing of the boy in the bubble, musician Paul Simon reminds us that we live in an age of “miracles and wonders.” Indeed, we have never had greater power to effectively prevent, diagnose, and treat illness. Medical science has helped more survive cancer than ever before. Organ failure, once fatal, can now be reversed by transplantation. AIDS has been transformed from an acute death sentence to a chronic livable illness. Never before have so many been blessed to grow old. Yet within these success stories one finds the seed of a new problem to be effectively faced—how to plan for, recognize, and provide comfort during the last chapter of life. (JAMA