Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine

An unusual book by a professor of religion analysing what the Bible might have to say across a range of bioethical considerations, but not in an unsubtle manner. A point made early in the book is that secularism leaves us 'too heavily dependent on the law as the working source of morality', as well as bereft of the accumulated wisdom of religious traditions. We cannot afford simply to reduce moral questions too quickly to legal ones. Applied to the Human Genome Project, Verhey cautions readers against assuming that the gene map is to be equated with the person, and quotes Francis Collins as saying that the HGP can be seen as an extension of the impulse to help heal the sick. The depth of the discussion and the extent of the references make the book a key text for religious people involved in bioethics.