NSHEN has developed the Bioethics Book Club as a resource for ethics committees, organizations and healthcare teams looking for a fun, creative, interactive way to facilitate discussion about health ethics issues and engage in ethics education.

We will select a variety of books with health ethics themes – both fiction and non-fiction – and develop a handout for each that includes a summary, some of the ethics issues addressed in the book and discussion questions.

Your group will select the book that is most relevant or of interest to you, give your group members time to read the book, and then use the discussion questions as a guide to facilitate a group discussion around the health ethics issues within each book and how they relate to your practice.

Some of these books are available in the NSHEN Lending Library and most are available through Nova Scotia’s public libraries.

Continue to check back often! Also, if you know of a book not on our list that would be a good fit for Bioethics Book Club, please let us know!

  • New Book Summary with Discussion Questions

    March 2025

    He Gets That From Me

    He Gets That From Me

    By Jaqueline Friedland

    SparkPress, 2021.

    Summary
    Maggie Fisher, her partner Nick, and their toddler, Wyatt, live in Pheonix. Maggie dreams of one day being able to afford to go back to school and study to become a teacher. One day she reads an advert from a fertility clinic, pairing couples with potential surrogate mothers. Maggie decides to apply because the money she would receive would allow her to pay for her tuition. Soon she is chosen as gestational carrier by Chip and Donovan Rigdale. Maggie becomes pregnant and delivers twins, Kai and Teddy. Ten years later, she gets a phone call from the fertility clinic asking her for a follow up DNA test.

    Also available as audiobook on Audible

    Ethical Issues:
    Genetic Testing Reproductive Choices
    Parental responsibility Identity
    Surrogacy Best Interest
    Family structures Nature versus nurture
    Discussion questions:

    What did you think of Nick’s reaction to Maggie’s decision to become a gestational carrier?
    What did you think of Chip’s initial reaction to the results of the DNA test?
    How do you see Donovan’s and Chip’s upbringing impacting their views and intentions with their own children?
    Do you think Maggie and Nick would have cared as much about the situation if they had been able to have another child together?
    In your opinion, do donor-conceived individuals have the right to know their genetic origin? Why/why not?


    1 Adapted from publisher’s summary.

    What are some of the ethical arguments in favor of and against surrogacy? Are Maggie and Nick Kai’s family?

    Were you surprised that no-one spoke to Kai at an earlier stage about what he wanted? Why/why not?

    How did the story impact your view on what ‘family’ is?


    Discuss the following passages from the book:
    p. 50. “Who’s going to help two gay men bring a child into the world? Is it even fair of us to attempt to raise a kid in this kind of family? Will our child be ridiculed every single day for having two daddies? I want to believe that attitudes and society at large have evolved, that Chip and I aren’t just living in some progressive bubble where we’ve surrounded ourselves with likeminded individuals and have been able to remain blissfully ignorant of lingering prejudices in the world at large, but I can’t wrestle down the uncertainty.”


    p. 86-87. “All you do is call those guys in New York, It’s like you don’t even have a life of your own anymore,” he said, spittle flying out his mouth. “You’re just this vessel. A uterus for hire.”
    “Don’t you ever think of what it’s like for them? I walked toward him, lugging all my anger with me. “I have their children with me, day in and day out, and they have absolutely no control over what I do to their babies.”


    p. 142. There are so many issues I never could have anticipated when I found that magazine ad back at Bed, Bath & Beyond all those years ago

Past Summaries

  • The Storyteller

    The Storyteller By Jodi Picoult Washington Square Press, 2013. Summary[1] Sage Singer, a young woman in her early twenties, is attending a grief support group after her mother’s death. Here she meets an elderly man, Josef Weber. Sage and Josef quickly become good friends, but their friendship changes when Josef asks Sage to help him… View Summary

  • In Our Likeness: A Novel

    Graham has a crush on his work colleague, Nessie. They work in a start-up tech company. One day Nessie approached Graham, asking him to test out a new algorithm she’s developed to detect lies on the internet. Graham agrees to test it. He edits in Nessie’s online profile information with a view to test if… View Summary

  • More or Less Maddy

    Summary Maddy Banks has just finished her first year at university. She’s had a difficult year, and been depressed, but during the summer Maddy’s mood changes significantly. She can’t sleep at night, and she acts in ways that are unusual for her. At first, Maddy’s mood changes go unnoticed by others, but during a family… View Summary

  • The Brill Pill

    In the not-so-distant future, the highly ambitious scientist, William Dalal, is working on improving lives of people using brain regeneration. However, personal tragedy and a rivalry between Will and another scientist causes Will to lose his moral compass. Driven by his ambition to help people become smarter and more successful, Will decides to take matters… View Summary

  • The Mad Women’s Ball

    Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister Blandine, she shunned religion and placed her faith in both the celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Charcot and science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugénie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family that has locked her away in the asylum. Because Eugénie… View Summary

Past Summaries (PDF)

(These older summaries are available in PDF format to view or download)