To the general reader and watcher of television programmes medical ethics may appear to be something new. This is not so, for hundreds of articles and many books have appeared over the last 10 years or so to discuss and analyse the problems arising from the practice of medicine. In this study of two larger works - Medical Ethics and Manipulation - both by Bernard Häring, a Roman Catholic theologian - Father Brendan Soane analyses these in some detail and sets (...) their ideas in the context of what has already been written on the major issues of medical ethics and what is likely to be foremost in discussion in the near future. Many readers of this Journal already have the particular background of knowledge to see the problems in medicine which are in fact ethical but the general reader may require help and enlightenment and this is now provided for a special field within the field. (shrink)