Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die ― Bioethics and the Transformation of Health Care in America

Shockingly, America has among the lowest life expectancies and highest infant mortality rates of any high-income nation, yet, as Amy Gutmann and Jonathan D. Moreno show in Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die, we spend twice as much per capita on medical care without even insuring everyone. Beginning with the revolutionary implementation of the polio vaccine and the discovery of DNA structure in the 1950s, the authors explore the troubling contradictions inherent in the expansion of medical research amidst a persistent neglect of human rights and social responsibilities. They consider the ethical implications of testing anthrax vaccines on children, using brain science for marketing campaigns, and underinvesting in mental and public health. Whether spotlighting radical changes in doctor-patient relations, legal controversies over in vitro babies, unaffordable new drugs, scarce transplant organs, or limited access to hospice care, this provocative history ultimately examines our culture’s obsession with having it all without paying the price.