Every year nine million people are diagnosed with tuberculosis, every day over 13,400 people are infected with AIDs, and every thirty seconds malaria kills a child. For most of the world, critical medications that treat these deadly diseases are scarce, costly, and growing obsolete, as access to first-line drugs remains out of reach and resistance rates rise. Rather than focusing research and development on creating affordable medicines for these deadly global diseases, pharmaceutical companies instead invest in commercially lucrative products for more affluent customers. Nicole Hassoun argues that everyone has a human right to health and to access to essential medicines, and she proposes the Global Health Impact (global-health-impact.org/new) system as a means to guarantee those rights. Her proposal directly addresses the pharmaceutical industry's role: it rates pharmaceutical companies based on their medicines' impact on improving global health, rewarding highly-rated medicines with a Global Health Impact label. Global Health Impact has three parts. The first makes the case for a human right to health and specifically access to essential medicines. Hassoun defends the argument against recent criticism of these proposed rights. The second section develops the Global Health Impact proposal in detail. The final section explores the proposal's potential applications and effects, considering the empirical evidence that supports it and comparing it to similar ethical labels. Through a thoughtful and interdisciplinary approach to creating new labeling, investment, and licensing strategies, Global Health Impact demands an unwavering commitment to global justice and corporate responsibility.

For over thirty years Susan Wolf has been writing about moral and nonmoral values and the relation between them. This volume collects Wolf's most important essays on the topics of morality, love, and meaning, ranging from her classic essay "Moral Saints" to her most recent "The Importance of Love." Wolf's essays warn us against the common tendency to classify values in terms of a dichotomy that contrasts the personal, self-interested, or egoistic with the impersonal, altruistic or moral. On Wolf's view, this tendency ignores or distorts the significance of such values as love, beauty, and truth, and neglects the importance of meaningfulness as a dimension of the good life. These essays show us how a self-conscious recognition of the variety of values leads to new understandings of the point, the content, and the limits of morality and to new ways of thinking about happiness and well-being.

Despite the massive scale of global inequalities, until recently few political philosophers or bioethicists addressed their ethical implications. Questions of justice were thought to be primarily internal to the nation state. Over the last decade or so, there has been an explosion of interest in the philosophical issues surrounding global justice. These issues are of direct relevance to bioethics. The links between poverty and health imply that we cannot separate questions of global health from questions about fair distribution of global resources and the institutions governing the world order. Similarly, as increasing numbers of medical trials are conducted in the developing world, researchers and their sponsors have to confront the special problems of doing research in an unjust world, with corresponding obligations to correct injustice and avoid exploitation. This book presents a collection of original essays by leading thinkers in political theory, philosophy, and bioethics. They address the key issues concerning global justice and bioethics from two perspectives. The first is ideal theory, which is concerned with the social institutions that would regulate a just world. What is the relationship between human rights and the provision of health care? How, if at all, should a global order distinguish between obligations to compatriots and others? The second perspective is from non-ideal theory, which governs how people should behave in the unjust world in which we actually find ourselves. What sort of medical care should actual researchers working in impoverished countries offer their subjects? What should NGOs do in the face of cultural practices with which they deem unethical? If coordinated international action will not happen, what ought individual states to do? These questions have more than theoretical interest; their answers are of direct practical import for policymakers, researchers, advocates, NGOs, scholars, and others. This book is the first collection to comprehensively address the intersection of global justice and bioethical dilemmas.

While scholars typically view Plato's engagement with medicine as uniform and largely positive, Susan B. Levin argues that from the Gorgias through the Laws, his handling of medicine unfolds in several key phases. Further, she shows that Plato views medicine as an important rival for authority on phusis (nature) and eudaimonia (flourishing). Levin's arguments rest on careful attention both to Plato and to the Hippocratic Corpus. Levin shows that an evident but unexpressed tension involving medicine's status emerges in the Gorgias and is explored in Plato's critiques of medicine in the Symposium and Republic. In the Laws, however, this rivalry and tension dissolve. Levin addresses the question of why Plato's rivalry with medicine is put to rest while those with rhetoric and poetry continue. On her account, developments in his views of human nature, with their resulting impact on his political thought, drive Plato's striking adjustments involving medicine in the Laws. Levin's investigation of Plato is timely: for the first time in the history of bioethics, the value of ancient philosophy is receiving notable attention. Most discussions focus on Aristotle's concept of phronesis (practical wisdom); here, Levin argues that Plato has much to offer bioethics as it works to address pressing concerns about the doctor-patient tie, medical professionalism, and medicine's relationship to society.

Our ability to map and intervene in the structure of the human brain is proceeding at a very quick rate. Advances in psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery have given us fresh insights into the neurobiological basis of human thought and behavior. Technologies like MRI and PET scans can detect early signs of psychiatric disorders before they manifest symptoms. Electrical and magnetic stimulation of the brain can non-invasively relieve symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and other conditions resistant to treatment, while implanting neuro-electrodes can help patients with Parkinsons and other motor control-related diseases. New drugs can help regenerate neuronal connections otherwise disrupted by schizophrenia and similar diseases.
All these procedures and drugs alter the neural correlates of our mind and raise fascinating and important ethical questions about their benefits and harms. They are, in a sense, among the most profound bioethical questions we face, since these techniques can touch on the deepest aspects of the human mind: free will; personal identity; the self; and the soul. This is the first single-author book on what has come to be known as neuroethics. Walter Glannon uses a philosophical framework that is fully informed by cutting edge neuroscience as well as contemporary legal cases such as Terri Schiavo, to offer readers an introduction to this fascinating topic. He starts by describing the state of the art in neuroscientific research and treatment, and gives the reader an up-to-date picture of the brain. Glannon then looks at the ethical implications of various kinds of treatments, such as: whether or not brain imaging will end up changing our viewson free will and moral responsibility; whether patients should always be told that they are at future risk for neurological diseases; if erasing unconscious emotional memories implicated in depression can go too far; if forcing behavior-modifying drugs or surgery on violent offenders can ever be justified; the implications of drugs that enhance cognitive abilities; and how to define brain death and the criteria for the withdrawal of life-support. While not exhaustive, Glannons work addresses a wide range of fascinating issues and his pathbreaking work should appeal to philosophers, psychiatrists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, radiologists, psychologists, and bioethicists.

Observing Bioethics examines the history of bioethics as a discipline related not only to modern biology, medicine, and biotechnology, but also to the core values and beliefs of American society and its courts, legislatures, and media. The book is written from the perspective of two social scientists--a sociologist of medicine(Renee C. Fox) and a historian of medicine (Judith P. Swazey)--who have participated in bioethics since the emergence of this multidisciplinary field more than 30 years ago.
Fox and Swazey draw on first-hand observations and experiences in a variety of American bioethical settings; face-to-face interviews with first- and second-generation figures in the genesis and early unfolding of bioethics; a detailed examination of the theatrical media coverage of what was considered to be a banner event in the annals of bioethics (the creation and birth of the cloned sheep, Dolly); case studies of how bioethics has internationally developed; and a large corpus of primary documents and secondary source materials.
While recognizing the intellectual, moral, and sociological importance of American bioethics, Fox and Swazey are critical of its characteristics. Foremost among these are what they identify as the problems of thinking socially, culturally, and internationally in American bioethics; the 'tenuous interdisciplinarity' of the field; and the troubling extent to which the 'culture wars' have penetrated bioethics.
This book will appeal to a wide range of doctors, scientists, and academics who are involved in the history and sociology of bioethics.

In recent decades there has been an explosion in work in the social and physical sciences describing the similarities between human and nonhuman as well as human and non-animal thinking. This work has explicitly decentered the brain as the sole, self-contained space of thought, and it has found thinking to be an activity that operates not only across bodies but also across bodily or cellular membranes, as well as multifaceted organic and inorganic environments. For example, researchers have looked at the replication and spread of slime molds (playfully asking what would happen if they colonized the earth) to suggest that they exhibit 'smart behavior' in the way they move as a potential way of considering the spread of disease across the globe. Other scholars have applied this model of non-human thought to the reach of data mining and global surveillance. In The Biopolitics of Alphabets and Embryos, Ruth Miller argues that these types of phenomena are also useful models for thinking about the growth, reproduction, and spread of political thought and democratic processes. Giving slime, data and unbounded entities their political dues, Miller stresses their thinking power and political significance and thus challenges the anthropocentrism of mainstream democratic theories. Miller emphasizes the non-human as highly organized, systemic and productive of democratic growth and replication. She examines developments such as global surveillance, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning, which have been characterized as threats to the privacy, dignity, and integrity of the rational, maximizing and freedom-loving democratic citizen. By shifting her level of analysis from the politics of self-determining subjects to the realm of material environments and information systems, Miller asks what might happen if these alternative, nonhuman thought processes become the normative thought processes of democratic engagement.

The third edition of The Basics of Bioethics continues to provide a balanced and systematic ethical framework to help students analyze a wide range of controversial topics in medicine, and consider ethical systems from various religious and secular traditions. The Basics of Bioethics covers the "Principalist" approach and identifies principles that are believed to make behavior morally right or wrong. It showcases alternative ethical approaches to health care decision making by presenting Hippocratic ethics as only one among many alternative ethical approaches to health care decision-making. The Basics of Bioethics offers case studies, diagrams, and other learning aids for an accessible presentation. Plus, it contains an all-encompassing ethics chart that shows the major questions in ethics and all of the major answers to these questions.

This timely and up to date new edition of Biomedicine and Beatitude features an entirely new chapter on the ethics of bodily modification. It is also updated throughout to reflect the pontificate of Pope Francis, recent concerns including ethical issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic, and feedback from the many instructors who used the first edition in the classroom

Contemporary bioethics, now roughly 40 years old as a discipline, originated in the United States with a primarily Anglo-American cultural ethos. It continues to be professionalized and institutionalized as a maturing discipline at the intersections of philosophy, medicine, law, social sciences, and humanities. Increasingly bioethics - along with its foundational values, concepts and principals - has been exported to other countries, not only in the developed West, but also in developing and/or Eastern countries. Bioethics thus continues to undergo intriguing transformations as it is globalized and adapted to local cultures. These processes have occurred rapidly in the last two decades, with relatively little reflection and examination.
This volume brings together contributors from a wide variety of disciplines to take a critical, empirical look at bioethics around the globe, examining how it is being transformed - at both local and global levels - in this process of cross-cultural exporting and importing. One concern is to identify sociocultural forces and consequences which may positively or negatively affect ethics and social justice goals. This book thereby offers the first comparative anthropology and sociology of globalizing bioethics in the field, exploring the global dissemination, local adaptations, cultural meanings and social functions of bioethics theories, practices and institutions and comparing developed and developing countries.
The volume considers a full range of countries on every inhabited continent, including: Africa, Asia, Australia, Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Topics include government agendas such as nationalism and nation building; agendas of powerful, associated professions (e.g., medicine, law); theological and political agendas such as 'culture wars'; agendas of entrepreneurial economies of profit; and other cultural and ideological agendas consciously or unconsciously advanced or contested by bioethics work in particular countries based on their unique history, politics and culture. This cross-cultural exploration of globalizing bioethics will be of great interest to a field that is increasingly introspective about its underlying sociocultural assumptions and biases.

"At last-an unabashedly sociological and anthropological look at the globalization of bioethics, a really fresh approach to a maturing discipline. The chapters speak from the perspective of sophisticated Western-developed exporters of the bioethical paradigm and equally sophisticated] Eastern-developing and third-world and interdisciplinary critics suspicious of the canonical view. Trained in the dominant school of American, mainstream philosophy, Myser draws on her long-standing commitment to a social and cultural approach to bioethics to take a fresh look at bioethics globally. She grasps the globalization of bioethics and the skepticism about analytical philosophy's Americanized consensus. The book sets the stage for a new era in bioethics theory and practice {debating] whether a universal common morality underlies the rich variation in national and cultural bioethics traditions."
- Robert Veatch, Georgetown University
"This path-breaking volume is the first to explore the global export of Western bioethics to a variety of non-Western settings. Explicitly critical, the book also points to the liberating potential of bioethics to achieve social justice and improve the lives of patients around the world. The book is a must-read for all medical anthropologists interested in bioethics." - Marcia Inhorn, Yale University
"Bioethics Around the Globe should change the way bioethics is conceived and practiced in the U.S. and elsewhere. Its rich and wide-ranging comparative examination opens new possibilities for bioethical reflection. I enthusiastically recommend this wonderful book." - James F. Childress, University of Virginia
"The past 40 years have seen a remarkable spread of bioethics to every part of the world. Dr. Myser's collection is a wonderful and rich exploration of its international impact, revealing important similarities and differences from country to country. It will have an important impact." - Daniel Callahan, The Hastings Center

William LaFleur (1936-2010), an eminent scholar of Japanese studies, left behind a substantial number of influential publications, as well as several unpublished works. The most significant of these examines debates concerning the practice of organ transplantation in Japan and the United States, and is published here for the first time. This provocative book challenges the North American medical and bioethical consensus that considers the transplantation of organs from brain dead donors as an unalloyed good. It joins a growing chorus of voices that question the assumption that brain death can be equated facilely with death. It provides a deep investigation of debates in Japan, introducing numerous Japanese bioethicists whose work has never been treated in English. It also provides a history of similar debates in the United States, problematizing the commonly held view that the American public was quick and eager to accept the redefinition of death. A work of intellectual and social history, this book also directly engages with questions that grow ever more relevant as the technologies we develop to extend life continue to advance. While the benefits of these technologies are obvious, their costs are often more difficult to articulate. Calling attention to the risks associated with our current biotech trajectory, LaFleur stakes out a highly original position that does not fall neatly onto either side of contemporary US ideological divides.

From rethinking feminist archives, to inserting postpornography in academia, to approaching sex toys from a transpositive perspective, to dismantling the foundations of techno-capitalism, the areas of inquiry in this book are lenses through which to explore the relationships between genders, bodies and technologies. All the various chapters work to reimagine the body as a hybrid, malleable and subversive source of potentiality. These essays offer readers road maps for unimagined and uncharted social scapes: the relationship between bodies-technologies-genders means working within a space of monstrosity. Through this embodied discomfort the book questions existing techno-social norms, and imagines tranfeminist futures. Contributors are: Carlotta Cossutta, Valentina Greco, Arianna Mainardi, Stefania Voli, Lucia Egana Rojas, Ludovico Virtu, Angela Balzano, Obiezione Respinta, Elisa Virgili, Rachele Borghi, and Diego Marchante "Genderhacker".

In this comprehensive updated introduction to animal ethics, Lori Gruen weaves together poignant and provocative case studies with discussions of ethical theory, urging readers to engage critically and reflect empathetically on our relationships with other animals. In clear and accessible language, Gruen discusses a range of issues central to human-animal relations and offers a reasoned new perspective on key debates in the field. She analyses and explains a range of theoretical positions and poses challenging questions that directly encourage readers to hone their ethical reasoning skills and to develop a defensible position about their own practices. Her book will be an invaluable resource for students in a wide range of disciplines including ethics, environmental studies, veterinary science, gender studies, and the emerging field of animal studies. The book is an engaging account of animal ethics for readers with no prior background in philosophy.

The culture wars are raging again. The term, which gained popular usage in the United States in the 1920s to describe the ideological divide between those with progressive versus conservative beliefs, now pits a coalition of conservatives and classical liberals against those who adhere to a far-left, postmodern ideology. Iconoclast: Ideas That Have Shaped the Culture Wars is an anthology of essays by, and interviews with, some of the world's most prominent public intellectuals on many of the social, cultural, philosophical, scientific, and political issues that have defined the culture wars of the last two decades. In an age of post-truth, the ideas expressed in this anthology will challenge many commonly held ideological beliefs. The modern culture wars are more than just a battle between the left and the right; they are a desperate struggle over which ideas are politically, socially, and morally acceptable - and who may express those ideas. It is a war over the definition of truth itself.

In this interdisciplinary work, philosophers from different specialisms connect with the notion of the wild today and interrogate how it is mediated through the culture of the Anthropocene. They make use of empirical material like specific artworks, films and other cultural works related to the term 'wild' to consider the aesthetic experience of nature, focusing on the untamed, the boundless, the unwieldy, or the unpredictable; in other words, aspects of nature that are mediated by culture. This book maps out the wide range of ways in which we experience the wildness of nature aesthetically, relating both to immediate experience as well as to experience mediated through cultural expression. A variety of subjects are relevant in this context, including aesthetics, art history, theology, human geography, film studies, and architecture. A theme that is pursued throughout the book is the wild in connection with ecology and its experience of nature as both a constructive and destructive force.

This is a book for anyone who has ever paused to wonder: Will cloning ever be legal? Why it is that 'saviour siblings' and sex selection provoke such strong reactions? Will there ever be such a thing as an artificial womb? Assisted reproductive technologies are unique in their capacity to challenge our assumptions and elicit passionate responses. Looking at the moral, philosophical, and legal issues surrounding cases of surrogacy, single or same-sex parenthood, retrieval of sperm from dead or dying patients, and the insemination of post-menopausal women, this book questions whether these rapidly-developing technologies are refashioning the nature of the family. The UK has played a unique role in the development and regulation of reproductive technologies, and has been at the forefront of controversy over 'saviour siblings', designer babies, reproductive cloning, and embryo research. This book provides a clear and simple account of the techniques involved in assisted reproduction and embryo research, and discusses the legal and ethical implications of some of these technologies, illustrated by compelling descriptions of real-life cases. The book also addresses the ways in which reproductive technologies are regulated, critically examining the role of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and comparing the UK's approach with that of other countries. Finally, it contemplates the possibility that some of our most deeply-held assumptions about human nature may be called into question by further developments in stem cell research and fertility treatments.

The ethics of creating-or declining to create-human beings has been addressed in several contexts: debates over abortion and embryo research; literature on "self-creation"; and discussions of procreative rights and responsibilities, genetic engineering, and future generations. Here, for the first time, is a sustained, scholarly analysis of all of these issues-a discussion combining breadth of topics with philosophical depth, imagination with current scientific understanding, argumentative rigor with accessibility. The overarching aim of Creation Ethics is to illuminate a broad array of issues connected with reproduction and genetics, through the lens of moral philosophy. With novel frameworks for understanding prenatal moral status and human identity, and exceptional fairness to those holding different views, David DeGrazia sheds new light on the ethics of abortion and embryo research, genetic enhancement and prenatal genetic interventions, procreation and parenting, and decisions that affect the quality of life of future generations. Along the way, he helpfully introduces personal identity theory and value theory as well as such complex topics as moral status, wrongful life, and the "nonidentity problem." The results include a subjective account of human well-being, a standard for responsible procreation and parenting, and a theoretical bridge between consequentialist and nonconsequentialist ethical theories. The upshot is a synoptic, mostly liberal vision of the ethics of creating human beings. "This is a valuable book on a fascinating topic, written by a major figure in the field. The topic of the ethics of creating people is both practically urgent, as new technologies develop for shaping human offspring, and also of great theoretical importance for ethics and meta-ethics because it engages the deepest issues, including those of moral status, the nature of justice, and identity. DeGrazia has already proved to be an important force in shaping the debate regarding these issues. Anyone writing on this topic will have to address this book head-on. The style is remarkably lucid and almost jargon-free. Given that the book is filled with complex, sustained argumentation, this is quite an accomplishment. This book will be of interest to legal scholars, philosophers working in normative ethics, meta-ethics, and bioethics, and public policy scholars." - Allen Buchanan, James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy, Duke University

This book is written for researchers, students and professionals in areas including animal welfare ethics, animal behaviourists, veterinarians, veterinary nurses, animal welfare counsellors, animal trainers, and professionals and volunteers with an interest in animal welfare ethics. Several of the main areas of ethical inquiry concerning animals are introduced, explained and analysed. Inquiries also cover cultural traditions affecting the well being of animals, and discussions concerning the role of aesthetics in practices relevant to the welfare of animals. Unlike many books which feature arguments about ethical theories this book includes elements of personal experience with animals. Although the author is an academic teaching within a university structure, he is also a professional animal trainer.

Medicine, Power, and the Law demonstrates that criminal and civil justice interact with medicine and public health more than is presently understood. The book focuses on the role of healthcare practitioners and an array of other professionals across industries in identifying wrongdoers, reporting behavior, and testifying on behalf of the state or government agencies. It also covers circumstances in which law enforcement relies on medicine for evidence or support in ways that compromise medical ethics. By reporting or testifying as experts, a range of people, from specialist pediatricians to flight attendants, can have a life-changing impact on individuals in the name of public health or medicine. People who work in hospitals, social work settings, and even airlines, often contribute to wrongful and aggressive criminal and civil actions against society's most vulnerable people, including parents, older adults, and people living with poverty. The book explores a number of examples, including police use of medicine as a restraint or the collection of blood as evidence and the risks of opting out of certain scientific discoveries, such as pharmaceuticals. It describes the harms that may come to those who engage in suboptimal but generally heretofore legal child-raising behaviors, and people opting to live independently as older adults. These can lead to civil and criminal charges when noticed by those in a position of power. Medicine, Power, and the Law is an important contribution for researchers and practitioners in medicine, the law, and the expanding field of bioethics.

In this book experts in the environment, theology and science argue that the challenge posed to society by biotechnology lies not only in terms of risk/benefit analysis of individual genetic technologies and interventions, but also has implications for the way we think about human identity and our relationship to the natural world. Such a profound--they would suggest religious--challenge requires a response that is genuinely interdisciplinary in nature, a conversation that draws as much on expertise in theology and philosophy as on the natural sciences and risk assessment techniques. They argue that an adequate response must also be sociologically informed in at least two ways. First it must draw on contemporary sociological insights about contemporary cultural change, the complex role of expert knowledge in modern complex society and the specific social dynamics of contemporary technological risks. Secondly, it must endeavour to pay sensitive attention to the voice of the lay public in the current controversy over the new genetics. This book attempts to realise such an aim, as a contribution not just to academic scholarship, but also to the public debate about biotechnology and its regulation. Thus the collection includes contributions from scholars in a range of intellectual domains (indeed, many of the chapters themselves draw on more than one discipline in new and challenging ways). The book invites the reader to enter into this conversation in a creative way and come to appreciate more fully the many-sided nature of the debate.

Public health is an important and fast-developing area of ethical discussion. In this volume a range of issues in public health ethics are explored using the resources of moral theory, political philosophy, philosophy of science, applied ethics, law, and economics. The twelve original papers presented consider numerous ethical issues arise within public health ethics. To what extent can the public good or the public interest justify state interventions that impose limits upon the freedom of individuals? What role should the law play in regulating risks? Should governments actively aim to change our preferences about such things as food, smoking or physical exercise? What are public goods, and what role (if any) do they play in public health? To what extent do individuals have moral obligations to contribute to protecting the community or the public good? Where is it appropriate to concentrate upon prevention rather than cure? Given the fact that we cannot be protected from all harm, what sorts of harm provide a justification for public health action? What limits do we wish to place upon public health activities? How do we ensure that the interests of individuals are not set aside or forgotten in the pursuit of population benefits? An excellent line-up of authors from North America, Europe, and the UK tackle these questions.

This book presents an interpretation of pharmaceutical, surgical and psychotherapeutic interventions based on a univalent metalanguage: biosemiotics. It proposes that a metalanguage for the physical, mental, social, and cultural aspects of health and medicine could bring all parts and aspects of human life together and thus shape a picture of the human being as a whole, made up from the heterogeneous images of the vast variety of sciences and technologies in medicine discourse. The book adopts a biosemiotics clinical model of thinking because, similar to the ancient principle of alchemy, tam ethice quam physice, everything in this model is physical as much as it is mental. Signs in the forms of vibrations, molecules, cells, words, images, reflections and rites conform cultural, mental, physical, and social phenomena. The book decodes healing, dealing with health, illness and therapy by emphasizing the first-person experience as well as objective events. It allows readers to follow the energy-information flows through and between embodied minds and to see how they form physiological functions such as our emotions and narratives.