Review essay: the nature of medicine and the teaching of medical ethics.

: The two books featured in this essay are the British Institute of Medicine's Report of a Working Party on the Teaching of Medical Ethics (London: The Institute; 1987), also known as the Pond Report, and John E. Thomas and Wilfred J. Waluchow's Well and Good: Case Studies in Biomedical Ethics (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press; 1987). The Pond Report was seen as resolving unsettled questions regarding medical education and as providing a practical framework for the development of new courses. Komesaroff uses the report to reflect on what he sees as deep, unresolved problems with the teaching of ethics in medicine, and with the structure of medicine itself. In this light, he critiques the limitations of textbooks such as Well and Good that reflect a general misunderstanding of the nature of medical practice and of the place of ethics within it.