Worst Case Bioethics : Death, Disaster, and Public Health by George J. Annas.

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In this book George Annas employs contemporary disputes involving death and disaster to explore the radical changes underway in public health practice, the application of constitutional law to medicine, and human rights discourse to promote health and wellbeing. American bioethics, still in its infancy, is routinely called on by the government to provide political cover for controversial public health decisions involving the life and death of Americans, Annas argues. Doomsday or worst-case scenarios are often at the heart of these biopolitical decisions. A central feature of science fiction, these scenarios can impart useful insights. But worst-case scenarios can also be unpredictably destructive, undermining both preparedness and the very values bioethics seeks to promote. Discovering a new flu strain, for example, leads immediately to visions of the 1918 flu pandemic, the worst in human history. Likewise, a "ticking time bomb" scenario leads to reliance on lawyers