When his teenage son Christopher, brain-damaged in an auto accident, developed a 105-degree fever following weeks of unconsciousness, John Campbell asked the attending physician for help. The doctor refused. Why bother? The boy’s life was effectively over. Campbell refused to accept this verdict. He demanded treatment and threatened legal action. The doctor finally relented. With treatment, Christopher’s temperature—which had eventually reached 107.6 degrees—subsided almost immediately. Soon afterward the boy regained consciousness and was learning to walk again.

This story is one of many Wesley J. Smith recounts in his award-winning classic critique of the modern bioethics movement, Culture of Death. In this newly updated edition, Smith chronicles how the threats to the equality of human life have accelerated in recent years, from the proliferation of euthanasia and the Brittany Maynard assisted suicide firestorm, to the potential for “death panels” posed by Obamacare and the explosive Terri Schiavo controversy.

My mother's doctor is refusing to give her antibiotics," the caller told me in an urgent voice. I asked why. "He says that she's ninety-two and an infection will kill her sooner or later, so it might as well be this infection. As disturbing as this call was, as outrageous the doctor's behavior, I wasn't particularly surprised. I have been receiving such desperate calls with increasing frequency for the last several years.

Not every day. Not every week. But with sufficient regularity to know that something very frightening is happening to American medical ethics.