<HTML><< Is this a serious question about Marxist medical ethics, Leo? Milton Fisk   has a new book out on medical ethics, arguing for national health care. Richard Schmitt has several books developing Marxist conceptions of human nature. I asked Yoshie the same question, but in fact there is good Marxist work at precisely the level you pitched the question. The authors I mentioned are only good examples. What is lacking is a general ethical theory that might rival utilitarianism or Kantianism. At the level of specific problems and applied ethics, Marxists have been active without a general theory. --jks >> I have not seen the recent Fisk book, but as you describe it -- an argument for national health care -- it does not delve into what is the overwhelming bulk of what is universally considered to be medical ethics. It is one macro-justice issue in a discipline which is dedicated to micro-justice issues. Arguments about human nature are even more tangential to medical ethics. I taught a class in medical ethics almost a decade ago, and did a rather exhaustive review of the literature at that point; I have to say that all of the philosophical work was either explicitly Kantian or explicitly utilitarian, and that concepts such as 'personhood' which provide the basis for all sorts of examinations of the value of human life are also explicitly Kantian in nature. I could easily run off a list of all sorts of practical issues in medical ethics -- from assisted suicide and euthanasia to priority in receiving transplanted organs, from truth-telling to patients to the nature of informed consent by patients, from when to withdraw life support measures to when to require life saving treatments --  about which I have never seen an Hegelian or Marxian analysis.   Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>