BMJ  2006;332:800 (1 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7544.800

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Book

The Philosophy of Palliative Care: Critique and Reconstruction

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It was Baroness Julia Neuberger who described the NHS as a theological institution in the pages of this journal (BMJ 1999;319: 1588-9[Free Full Text]). Randall and Downie's new book, in which they argue that end of life care has become overprofessionalised, is not so much a philosophy of palliative care as a theological tract. In treating the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine as a sacred text, the World Health Organization as a synod, and Dame Cicely Saunders (obituary BMJ 2005;331: 238[Free Full Text]) as a founding guru, their book forms an essentially theological argument. The argument is an appeal to a primitive form of palliative medicine in much the same way as the 16th century reformers made an appeal to apostolic simplicity. This is seductive but unrealistic—one can no more take palliative medicine back to 1967 than one can turn Bach's B . . . [Full text of this article]

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Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Glasgow Paul.Keeley@northglasgow.scot.nhs.uk

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