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Previous Volume 334:670-671 March 7, 1996 Number 10 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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By Miles Little. 195 pp. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1995. $49.95 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). ISBN 0-521-49513-X (cloth); 0-521-49863-5 (paper).

Because the epistemologic basis of medicine is probabilistic, it is difficult for patients to give truly informed consent for a treatment. The patient seeks a factual answer to questions: "Will I get better?" "Will I have a complication?" The clinician offers a probability: "You have a 90 percent chance of getting better." So says philosopher and surgeon Miles Little. From this he deduces that better doctor–patient communication is essential if medicine is to be more satisfying to its customers, the patients, and that a humanistic education will lay the proper foundation for better communication.

This recommendation, which many physicians have . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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