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Bioethics and Armed Conflict: Moral Dilemmas of Medicine and War, Michael L. Gross (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 400 pp., $65 cloth, $26 paper.
Bioethics and Armed Conflict is a book that people interested in ethics and international affairs will want to have on their shelves. It is important as an analysis of some of the least-discussed dilemmas related to warfare: the ethics of battlefield medical triage, the role of physicians in interrogational torture, weapons research, and peacemaking. The book's value, however, extends beyond its novel subject matter to include its innovative methodology. Michael Gross uses four key principles of bioethicsautonomy, right to life, dignity, and utility (p. 17)-to analyze moral dilemmas of armed conflict. Master's students in my class on ethics and international security loved this book for its real-world issues and systematic arguments.
Although he does not describe himself as such, Gross appears to be what is known as a rule-utilitarian. Like deontologists, rule-utilitarians apply specified principles, or rules, to make decisions and ethical judgments. Unlike deontologists, these theorists use the principle of utility-the greatest good for the greatest number-to evaluate the ethical desirability of particular rules and to arbitrate when they come into conflict. For the...