Jessica Mitford and Ethics.

I just started reading "Decca's" The American Way of Death, originally published in the early 60s and revised in 1995 just before her death. So far I am humbled by the wit, humor, and tenaciousness she brings to a seemingly macabre subject, my subject, and one about which I often write with a dour and hyper-serious tone. She is light, scathing, yet grounded. As I work through edits on my own book proposal, I need to remember not only her tone but her gravity and self-assuredness. It's about death and it's a good read!

Anyway, I post to capture this one fragment of a sentence which we seem - which I seem - to forget so often when discussing death, patients' rights, separation of church and state, provider refusals, end of life care, bioethics, and health care reform:

"To be 'ethical' merely means to adhere to a prevailing code of morality...."