Cahill's essay traces the development of social bioethics over the past three decades and considers a current, significant problem for Catholic bioethics as an ethics of the common good: practicability. She uses the example of the AIDS crisis to show how such a bioethical system is being put into practice. Cahill teaches theology at Boston College and has been a visiting scholar in ethics and theology at Georgetown U. and Yale U. The slim volume is extensively footnoted but has no index. Annotation © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR