This book gives an overview of the most salient themes in present-day bioethics. The book focuses on perspectives typical for the European context. This highlights not only particular bioethical themes such as social justice, choices in health care, and health policy (e.g., in post-communist countries), it also emphasizes specific approaches in ethical theory, in relation to Continental philosophies such as phenomenology and hermeneutics.

This book draws a connection between ethics and research across social sciences, philosophy, medical sciences and legal sciences, and demonstrates that any research activity needs to be conducted by means of rules deriving from the field of ethics. Although having a common core, such rules assume different characteristics depending on the branch of science, as the contributions on philosophy, medicine, dentistry, law, biotechnology, robotics and architecture highlight. It also investigates the more complex ethical concerns and places them in a larger, technological context. Starting with an introduction to common-sense ethical principles, the contributions then guide the reader, helping them develop and understand a comprehensive knowledge on the field. Notably, it appeared interesting to analyze recent events related to the arrival of the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic in light of ethical principles, highlighting in what terms their applicability can still be confirmed. Moreover, the book makes these topics accessible to a non-expert audience, while also offering alternative reading pathways to inspire more specialized readers.

This is the first monograph to deal with medicine as a form of hermeneutics, now in a thoroughly revised and updated edition, including a whole new chapter on medical ethics. The book offers a comprehensive philosophical argument why good medical practice cannot be curtailed to scientific investigations of the body but is a form of clinical hermeneutics performed by health-care professionals in dialogue with their patients. Medical hermeneutics is rooted in a phenomenology of illness which acknowledges and proceeds from the ill party's bodily feelings, everyday life-world circumstances and self-understanding in aiming to restore health. The author shows how the works of classical phenomenologists and hermeneuticians - Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur - may be employed to understand how medical diagnosis is enveloped by professional empathy and clinical judgement and developed by scientific investigations of the patient's bodily condition. Health and illness are ultimately considered to be ways of feeling at home or not at home in the world, and such experiences are the starting point of medical hermeneutics when aiming to make best use of scientific knowledge. The book is aimed at researchers and teachers in philosophy of medicine and medical ethics, and at physicians, nurses and other health-care professionals meeting with patients in ethically complex and challenging situations. Phenomenology and hermeneutics, most often considered as methods belonging to the humanities, are shown to be of vital importance for the understanding of medical practice and ethical dilemmas of health care.

This book focuses on justice and its demands in the way of providing people with medical care. Building on recent insights on the nature of moral perceptions and motivations from the neurosciences, it makes a case for the traditional medical ethic and examines its financial feasibility. The book starts out by giving an account of the concept of justice and tracing it back to the practices and tenets of Hippocrates and his followers, while taking into account findings from the neurosciences. Next, it considers whether the claim that it is just to limit medical care for everyone to some basic minimum is justifiable. The book then addresses finances and expenditures of the US health care system and shows that the growth of expenditures and the percentage of the gross national product spent on health care make for an unsustainable trajectory. In light of the question what should be changed, the book suggests that overdiagnosis and medicalizing normal behavior lead to harmful, costly and unnecessary interventions and are the result of unethical behavior on the part of the pharmaceutical industry and extensive ethical failures of the FDA. The book ends with suggestions about what can be done to put the U.S. health care system on the path to sustainability, better medical care, and compliance with the demands of justice.

In contemporary ethical discussion widespread concern about the potential risks of genetic engineering is raising new and fundamental questions about our responsibilities towards unborn generations. Newly acquired knowledge in genetic engineering techniques has brought about not only potential benefits but also immense risks for the well-being of both present and future generations. This book raises a number of ethical issues concerning the impact of genetic engineering on generations yet to be born. The four topical areas that constitute the focus of the volume, namely (1) from laboratory to germ-line therapy, (2) the concept of human nature: theological and secular perspectives, (3) genetic intervention and the common heritage view, and (4) social responsibilities of geneticists towards future generations, raise intriguing ethical and legal questions, as well as important policy issues. As much as any set of issues, they reflect the hopes and fears, prejudices and uncertainties that people associate with germ-line intervention and the future of human kind.

As the field of bioethics has matured, increasing attention is being paid to how bioethical issues are treated in different moral and religious traditions and in different regions of the world. It is often difficult, however, to obtain timely information about these matters. The Bioethics Yearbook series analyzes how such issues as new reproductive techniques, abortion, maternal-fetal conflicts, care of seriously ill newborns, consent, confidentiality, equitable access, cost-containment, withholding and withdrawing treatment, euthanasia, the definition of death, and organ transplantation are being discussed in different religions and regions. Volume 5 discusses theological developments from 1992 to 1994 in Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Hindu, Jehovah's Witness, Jewish, Latter-Day Saint, Lutheran, Methodist, Muslim, Pentecostal, and Presbyterian traditions.

The genie is out of the bottle. A whole new world of genetics research is underway with its exciting potential for a better understanding of heredity and genetically inherited disease, with opportunities for prevention, management and cure. But the current explosion of human genetic information has the potential for abuse also, for damage to rights, privacy and fair treatment for individuals and vulnerable groups. This book brings us up to date with important contributions from the authoritative "Encyclopaedia of the Human Genome" on the urgent social, legal and ethical aspects of the Human Genome enterprise, accessibly written and introduced for the undergraduate, postgraduate and general reader.

This book provides a multidisciplinary analysis of the potential conflict between a government's duty to protect children and a parent(s)' right to raise children in a manner they see fit. Using philosophical, bioethical, and legal analysis, the author engages with key scholars in pediatric decision-making and individual and religious rights theory. Going beyond the parent-child dyad, the author is deeply concerned both with the inteests of the broader society and with the appropriate limits of government interference in the private sphere. The text offers a balance of individual and population interests, maximizing liberty but safeguarding against harm. Bioethics and law professors will therefore be able to use this text for both a foundational overview as well as specific, subject-level analysis. Clinicians such as pediatricians and gynecologists, as well as policy-makers can use this text to achieve balance between these often competing claims. The book is written by a physician with practical and theoretical knowledge of the subject, and deep sympathy for the parental and family perspectives. As such, the book proposes a new way of evaluating parental and state interventions in children's' healthcare: a refreshing approach and a useful addition to the literature.

This volume is a collection of essays concerned with the morality of hu man treatment of nonhuman animals. The contributors take very different approaches to their topics and come to widely divergent conclusions. The goal of the volume as a whole is to shed a brighter light upon an aspect of human life-our relations with the other animals-that has recently seen a great increase in interest and in the generation of heat. The discussions and debates contained herein are addressed by the contributors to each other, to the general public, and to the academic world, especially the biological, philosophical, and political parts of that world. The essays are organized into eight sections by topics, each sec tion beginning with a brief introduction linking the papers and the sec tions to one another. There is also a general introduction and an Epilog that suggests alternate possible ways of organizing the material. The first two sections are concerned with the place of animals in the human world: Section I with the ways humans view animals in literature, philosophy, and other parts of human culture, and Section II with the place of animals in human legal and moral community. The next three sections concern comparisons between human and nonhuman animals: Section III on the rights and wrongs of killing, Section IV on the humanity of animals and the animality of humans, and Section V on questions of the conflict of human and animal interests."

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.

This anthology of essays presents a sample of studies from recent philosophy of medicine addressing issues which attempt to answer very general (interdependent) questions: (a) what is a disease and what is health? (b) How do we (causally) explain diseases? (c) And how do we distinguish diseases, i.e. define classes of diseases and recognize that an instance X of disease belongs to a given class B? (d) How do we assess and choose cure/ therapy?

The book is divided into three sections: classification, disease and evidence. In general, attention is focused on statistics in medicine and epidemiology, issues in psychiatry and connecting medicine with evolutionary biology and genetics. Many authors position the theories that they address within their historical contexts.

The nature of health and disease will be addressed in several essays that also touch upon very general questions about the definition of medicine and its status.Several chapters scrutinize classification because of its centrality within philosophical problems raised by medicine and its core position in the philosophical questioning of psychiatry. Specificities of medical explanation have recently come under a new light, particularly because of the rise of statistical methods and several chapters investigate these methods in specific contexts such as epidemiology or meta-analysis of random testing. Taken together this collection addresses the question of how we gather, use and assess evidence for various medical theories.

The rich assortment of disciplines featured also includes epidemiology, parasitology and public health, while technical aspects such as the application of game theory to medical research and the misuse of the DSM in forensic psychiatry are also given an airing. The book addresses more than the construction of medical knowledge, however, adding cogent appraisal of the processes of decision making in medicine and the protocols used to justify therapeutic choices."

This volume explores Confucian views regarding the human body, health, virtue, suffering, suicide, euthanasia, human drugs, ' human experimentation, and justice in health care distribution. These views are rooted in Confucian metaphysical, cosmological, and moral convictions, which stand in contrast to modern Western liberal perspectives in a number of important ways. In the contemporary world, a wide variety of different moral traditions flourish; there is real moral diversity. Given this circumstance, difficult and even painful ethical conflicts often occur between the East and the West with regard to the issues of life, birth, reproduction, and death. The essays in this volume analyze the ways in which Confucian bioethics can clarify important moral concepts, provide arguments, and offer ethical guidance. The volume should be of interest to both general readers coming afresh to the study of bioethics, ethics, and Confucianism, as well as for philosophers, ethicists, and other scholars already familiar with the subject.

This open access book offers insights in short- and long-term experiences from families with bone marrow transplantations between minor siblings. It is based on the first extended qualitative study with 17 families about experiences with recent transplants and experiences with transplants up to 20 years in the past. It covers reflections of donors, recipients and other family members, as well as family interactions. Transplantation of bone marrow from one sibling to another who is ill with a blood cancer (such as Leukemia) is a life-saving therapy. Young children however are not in a position to give consent themselves. How should they be adequately included, depending to their age? Which ethical questions are raised for the parents both at the time of treatment and afterwards, and for the medical professionals in clinical and regulatory contexts? For an in-depth discussion of the findings the books brings together a group of leading scholars from the fields of bioethics, family sociology and philosophy of medicine.

This book assists health care providers to understand the specific interplay of the roles and relationships currently forming the debates in pediatric clinical ethics. It builds on the fact that, unlike adult medical ethics, pediatric ethics begins within an acutely and powerfully experienced dynamic of patient-family-state-physician relationship. The book provides a unique perspective as it interacts with established approaches as well as recent developments in pediatric ethics theory, and then explores these developments further through cases. The book first focuses on setting the stage by introducing a theoretical framework and elaborating how pediatric ethics differ from non-pediatric ethics. It approaches different theoretical frameworks in a critical manner drawing on their strengths and weaknesses. It helps the reader in developing an ability to engage in ethical reasoning and moral deliberation in order to focus on the wellbeing of the child as the main participant in the ethical deliberation, as well as to be able to identify the child's moral claims. The second section of the book focuses on the practical application of these theoretical frameworks and discusses specific areas pertaining to decision-making. These are: the critically ill child, new and enduring ethical controversies, and social justice at large, the latter of which includes looking at the child's place in society, access to healthcare, social determinants of health, and vaccinations. With the dynamic changes and challenges pediatric care faces across the globe, as well as the changing face of new technologies, no professional working in the field of pediatrics can afford not to take due note of this resource.

This book showcases multidisciplinary research at the intersection of the Islamic tradition and biomedicine. Within this broad area of scholarship, this book considers how Islamic theological constructs align with the science and practice of medicine, and in so doing offer resources for bridging the challenges of competing ontological visions, varied epistemic frameworks, and different theologies of life and living among the bodies of knowledge. By bringing together theologians, medical practitioners and intellectual historians, the book spurs deeper conversations at the intersection of these fields and provides fundamental resources for further dedicated research.

A TIMES ENVIRONMENT AND SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 'Brilliant .. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough' - Henry Marsh, New Statesman (about The Idea of the Brain) A new gene editing technology, invented just seven years ago, has turned humanity into gods. Enabling us to manipulate the genes in virtually any organism with exquisite precision, CRISPR has given scientists a degree of control that was undreamt of even in science fiction. But CRISPR is just the latest, giant leap in a long journey to master genetics. The Genetic Age shows the astonishing, world-changing potential of the new genetics and the possible threats it poses, sifting between fantasy and the reality when it comes to both benefits and dangers. By placing each phase of discovery, anticipation and fear in the context of over fifty years of attempts to master the natural world, Matthew Cobb, the Baillie-Gifford-shortlisted author of The Idea of the Brain, weaves the stories of science, history and culture to shed new light on our future. With the powers now at our disposal, it is a future that is almost impossible to imagine - but it is one we will create ourselves.

This book engages in a critical discussion on how to respect and promote patients' autonomy in difficult cases such as palliative care and end-of-life decisions. These cases pose specific epistemic, normative, and practical problems, and the book elucidates the connection between the practical implications of the theoretical debate on respecting autonomy, on the one hand, and specific questions and challenges that arise in medical practice, on the other hand. Given that the idea of personal autonomy includes the notion of authenticity as one of its core components, the book explicitly includes discussions on underlying theories of the self. In doing so, it brings together original contributions and novel insights for "applied" scenarios based on interdisciplinary collaboration between German and Serbian scholars from philosophy, sociology, and law. It is of benefit to anyone cherishing autonomy in medical ethics and medical practice.

Introduces an approach to ethical decision making based on treating data as clients Compares the ethics of three professions; engineering, medicine and bioengineering Provides five moral theories to choose from for evaluating ethical decisions, and includes a procedure for applying them to moral analysis, and application of the procedure to example cases. Explains the process of developing a medical product under FDA regulation Explores the role of lawyers in product development, including intellectual property protection Examines a range of ethical cases, from the historical Tuskegee autonomy case to the modern CRISPR-Cas9 patent case.

Originally published in 1995, The Early Writings of Harold W. Clark and Frank Lewis Marsh is the eighth volume in the Creationism in Twentieth Century America series, reissued in 2019. The book is a collection of original writings by the prominent creationist Harold W. Clark, and the biologist, educator and young Earth creationist Frank Lewis Marsh. Although both were significant figures in the anti-evolutionist movement of the early 20th century, unlike other members of the movement, both Marsh and Clarke were trained scientists studying under eminent evolutionists of the time. Both writers struggled to reconcile new scientific understandings of geology, botany and palaeontology, supported by Darwin’s theory of evolution, with their own creationist beliefs in genesis and flood theory. Both scientists as such began to develop their own theories of evolution that remained in line with creationist beliefs. This compact and unique collection includes the writings of Marsh and Clark from this period, featuring some of their well-known works on the subject including ‘Back to Creation’ and ‘Fundamental Biology’. This volume of original sources will be of interest to academics of religion, natural history and historians of the 19th century.

This book introduces "biolaw" as an integrated and distinct field in contemporary legal studies. Corresponding to the legal dimension of bioethics, the term "biolaw" is already in use in academic and research activities to denote legal issues emerging mostly from advanced technological applications. This book is a genuine attempt to rationalize the field of biolaw after almost four decades of continuous production of relevant legislation and judgments worldwide. This experience is a robust basis for defending a) a separate legal object, covering the total of legal norms that govern the management of life as a natural phenomenon in all its possible forms, and b) an "evolutionary" approach that opens the discussion on a future conciliation of legal regulation with the Theory of Evolution on the ground of biolaw.

This book provides a detailed introduction to the cloning of both plants and animals and discusses the important social, ethical, political, technical, and other issues related to the practice. The history of cloning experiments dates back more than a century, but advances in technology in recent decades have multiplied the potential applications of cloning-and expanded the controversies surrounding these possibilities. Cloning: A Reference Handbook provides an accessible description of the development of plant and animal cloning from the early stages of human civilization to the present day and coherently covers the science and technology involved. It reviews the essential controversies that have arisen about cloning-particularly applications involving human DNA-as researchers have advanced and extended the tools for cloning organisms. Additionally, the book discusses public opinion about cloning and the legislative and administration actions that have been taken with regard to the practice. This single-volume work provides a broad treatment of the subject, going back further in history than is the case with most texts, covering plant cloning and providing a thorough overview of the nature of animal cloning and related issues. Examples of the topics covered include the natural "cloning" processes of regeneration in plants and animals; crucial research breakthroughs on animal cloning by Robert Briggs and Thomas King, John Gurdon, Gail Martin, James Till and Earnest McCulloch, and others; and the laws that regulate which types of cloning are allowed and prohibited in the United States and in other countries. Offers an informed perspective on cloning and its potential applications in everyday life and elsewhere Includes profiles of key individuals and organizations related to the field of cloning, a Perspectives chapter, a chronology of important events in the history of cloning, and a glossary of key terms that strengthen the reader's undersatanding of the topic Supplies the necessary historical background and context for readers to understand why cloning of both plants and animals is of great importance-and why cloning technology is even more critical when it involves human beings

Juristen, Mediziner, Pharmazeuten und versicherungsrechtlich Interessierte finden in diesem Werk ein Kompendium, das die ganze Bandbreite des Medizin- und Haftungsrechts erfasst. Versicherungsrechtliche Problemstellungen und weitere Grundfragen des Privatrechts sind gleichfalls mit einbezogen. Hochkaratige Autoren aus den Bereichen der Jurisprudenz und der Medizin, aus Wissenschaft und Praxis geben Antworten auf zentrale Fragen zu Entwicklungen, zu aktuellen Brennpunkten und zu Perspektiven der genannten Gebiete. Den thematischen Gegenstanden, insbesondere der Medizin und seinen Rechtsfragen entsprechend werden intradisziplinar die uberkommenen Grenzen des Zivil-, Straf- und Offentlichen Rechts uberschritten. Die internationale Ausrichtung des Gesamtwerkes uberwindet die Einengungen des nationalen Rechts. Schliesslich wird die interdisziplinare Dimension von Recht, Haftung und Medizin in das Blickfeld geruckt. Mit ihren Beitragen ehren die Autoren anlasslich seines achtzigsten Geburtstages Erwin Deutsch, den in Deutschland und weit daruber hinaus hochgeschatzten Pionier und Grand Seigneur des Medizin- und Haftungsrechts."

This book addresses the fundamental conflict of interest that physicians face in their daily work lives between the ethics of proper medical care versus the demands of standard business practices. However, unlike other books of this sort, this one places direct responsibility for this ethical dilemma upon the shoulders of physicians themselves. Taking ethical, legal, and business perspectives into account, the book traces the historically evolving response of American physicians to ever-increasing business interests within the profession. These financial concerns now have become intrinsic not only to the practice of medicine but seemingly also to the character of a growing segment of its practitioners. The book offers a plea for a change to a more socialized healthcare system as used in other advanced nations.

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.

Human enhancement has become a major concern in debates about the future of contemporary societies. This interdisciplinary book is devoted to clarifying the underlying ambiguities of these debates, and to proposing novel ways of exploring what human enhancement means and understanding what practices, goals and justifications it entails.