Whether ethics is too important to be left to the experts or so important that it must be is an age-old question. The emergence of clinical ethicists raises it again, as a question about professionalism. What role clinical ethicists should play in healthcare decision making – teacher, mediator, or consultant – is a question that has generated considerable debate but no consensus.

Book reviewed in this article: Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in Patriarchal Society. By Barbara Katz Rothman. Surrogate Motherhood: The Legal and Human Issues. By Martha A. Field.

Book reviewed in this article: Madness and the Criminal Law. By Norval Morris. The Insanity Plea: The Uses and Abuses of the Insanity Defense. By William J. Winslade and Judith Wilson Ross.