In Thieves of Virtue, Tom Koch argues that bioethics has failed to deliver on its promises. Instead, he argues, bioethics has promoted a view of medicine as a commodity whose delivery is predicated not on care but on economic efficiency. Koch questions the ¿founding myths¿ of bioethics by which moral philosophers became practical ethicists who served as adjudicators of medical practice and planning. High philosophy, he argues, does not provide a guide to the practical dilemmas that arise at the bedside of sick patients. Nobody, he writes, carries Kant to a clinical consult.

Tom Koch, a bioethicist and gerontology consultant in Toronto, is the author of Mirrored Lives: Aging Children and Aging Parents; Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine; Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground; and other books.