This book offers a reflection on the central role that the ethics of informed consent plays in Rapid Tissue Donation (RTD). RTD is an advanced oncology procedure that involves the procurement, for research purposes, of "fresh" tissues within two to six hours of a cancer patient's death. Since RTD involves the retrieval of tissues after death, and since the collected tissues are of great importance for medical research, the need for any form of informed consent to regulate this procedure has been questioned. This book argues for the necessity of informed consent to govern RTD, and it provides the reader with a bespoke informed consent process applicable to cancer patients. The analysis unfolds at the intersection between applied ethics, public health ethics, and clinical ethics, and it is informed by philosophical theories of informed consent and by the social implications of individual choices. By viewing medical issues relating to informed consent in oncology from an ethical perspective, the book combines philosophical analysis with discussion of concrete cancer-related issues. As a result, the book is suitable for readers interested in ethical reasoning as well as for those with a medical background. It contributes to contemporary research by offering an original analysis that relies on a rigorous philosophical approach to address innovative issues at the cutting edge of medical research and policy making.

This Open Access book illustrates the power of stories to illuminate ethical concerns that arise in public health. It complements epidemiological or surveillance evidence, and reveals stakeholder perspectives crucial for public health practitioners to develop effective and ethical public health interventions. Because it relies on the natural and universal appeal of stories, the book also serves to introduce the field of public health to students considering a career in public health. The opening section of the book also serves as a more didactic introduction to public health ethics and the field of narrative ethics. It describes the field of public health ethics including ethical principles relevant to public health practice and research, and the advantages of a narrative ethics approach. That approach explores the problems and the ethical challenges of public health from the inside, from the perspective of those experiencing health problems to the challenges of those who must address these problems. The later sections consist of 14 chapters that present the actual stories of these public health problems and challenges. In narrative style they range from first person narratives of both practitioners and citizens, to analysis of published short stories. The problems and challenges they address include issues relating to justice concerns, surveillance and stigma, community values and the value of community, trust and the value of information, and freedom and responsibility. Specific public health topics include resource allocation, restricting liberty to protect the community from health threats, and the health impact of trauma, addiction, obesity and health disparities.

This book observes the idea of race as a false representation for the cause of disease. Race-based medicine, an emerging field in pharmacology, aims to create a specialty market based on racial groups. Within this market, the drug BiDil set a precedent in this area of medicine targeting African Americans as its first racial group. Consequently, selecting African Americans as a "starter group" led to ethical questions regarding the motive behind race-based medicine within the context of the larger treatment of blacks in American medical history. This book therefore links medicine and American eugenics, examines race-based medicine's influence on the perception of the black body, traces the influence of BiDil's approval on the resurgence of race-based medicine, and assesses the black church's response to race-based medicine using black liberation theology as a means to social justice.

This book argues that legal theory provides a jumping-off point for the study of controversial topics related to the work of Practicing Healthcare Ethicists (PHEs). Healthcare ethics consultation has had a place in healthcare for many decades yet the nature of the work is not well understood by many of its critics as well as its defenders. PHEs have been described as compromised and ineffectual, politicised and undemocratic, and their promise to offer sound advice has been deemed irredeemably incoherent in the context of value pluralism. Legal theorists have long attended to the relationship between law and morality, and the supposed tension between democracy and the role of an expert judiciary. An appreciation that these debates are not unique to the practice of healthcare ethics can help PHEs to engage critics with a renewed confidence and some fresh approaches to perennial, and hitherto unproductive, arguments. This book will be of great interest to practicing healthcare ethicists, as well as those who rely upon their services (healthcare professionals and healthcare leaders, patients, and their families) as well as academics working in the broader field of bioethics.

As robots are becoming more and more sophisticated the interest in robot dynamics is increasing. Within this field, contact problems are among the most interesting, since contacts are present in almost any robot task and introduce serious complexity to system dynamics, strongly influencing robot behavior. The book formulates dynamic models of robot interaction with different kinds of environment, from pure geometrical constraints to complex dynamic environments. It provides a number of examples. Dynamic modeling is the primary interest of the book but control issues are treated as well. Because dynamics and contact control tasks are strongly related the authors also provide a brief description of relevant control issues.
The book will be of interest to engineers working in research and development in robotics and automation and to both graduate and postgraduate students. The work will also be valuable to readers involved in manufacturing, robotics, automation, computer and control engineering.

Current Legal Issues, like its sister volume Current Legal Problems, is based upon an annual colloquium held at University College London. Each year, leading scholars from around the world gather to discuss the relationship between law and another discipline of thought. Each colloquium examines how the external discipline is conceived in legal thought and argument, how the law is pictured in that discipline, and analyses points of controversy in the use, and abuse, of extra-legal arguments within legal theory and practice.
Law and Bioethics, the latest volume in the Current Legal Issues series, contains a broad range of essays by scholars interested in the interactions between law and bioethics. It includes studies examining the regulation of stem cell research, human rights and bioethics, the regulation of reproductive technologies, and distributive justice in healthcare and pandemic planning.

The editors of the Philosophy and Medicine series recognize with grat itude the foresight, understanding, hard labor, and patience of Prof. Kazumasa Hoshino. It is his perseverance that has made this volume a reality. It was his faith in ideas that brought together a cluster of scholars in Tokyo on September 2-4, 1994, at Sophia University for a U. S. -J apan Bioethics Congress. With the support of the Foundation for Advance ment of International Science, the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Foundation of Thanatology, the Japanese Center for Quality of Life Studies, and Sophia University, scholars from Canada, Germany, Japan, and the United States were able to explore the differ ences and similarities in their approaches to bioethics and health care policy. That conference first produced a volume through Shibunkaku Publishers of Kyoto that appeared in 1995 in J apanese: The Dignity of Death, edited by Kazumasa Hoshino. Selections from those materials have been reworked for an English audience and now appear, along with new essays, in this volume. The field of comparative bioethics is only in its infancy. We are deeply grateful to Prof. Kazumasa Hoshino, one of the fathers of J apanese bioethics, for having made this volume possible. H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. Stuart F. Spicker Vll ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume's editors and Kluwer Academic Publishers wish to thank Shibunkaku Press, Kyoto, Japan, for permission to publish, without charge, essays derived from the U. S."

This book brings the animal into the scholarly discussion of animal-assisted therapy and other interventions. Challenging the current reliance on outcome studies, the author offers a new way of thinking empirically about animal-assisted interventions-analysis of human-animal interaction as a critical component. Through empirical demonstrations from laboratory and applied settings, the book encourages practitioners and scholars to undergo a deeper examination of the basic interactions that occur between clients or patients and therapy animals. Dr. Fournier provides new ideas on measurement, experimentation, and interpretation of human-animal interaction, aimed at identifying the role of the animal in interventions for human health and well-being.

In Rescuing Humanity, Willem H. Vanderburg reminds us that we have relied on discipline-based approaches for human knowing, doing, and organizing for less than a century. During this brief period, these approaches have become responsible for both our spectacular successes and most of our social and environmental crises. At their roots is a cultural mutation that includes secular religious attitudes that veil the limits of these approaches, leading to their overvaluation. Because their use, especially in science and technology, is primarily built up with mathematics, living entities and systems can be dealt with only as if their "architecture" or "design" is based on the principle of non-contradiction, which is true only for non-living entities. This distortion explains our many crises. Vanderburg begins to explore the limits of discipline-based approaches, which guides the way toward developing complementary ones capable of transcending these limits. It is no different from a carpenter going beyond the limits of his hammer by reaching for other tools. As we grapple with everything from the impacts of social media, the ongoing climate crisis, and divisive political ideologies, Rescuing Humanity reveals that our civilization must learn to do the equivalent if humans and other living things are to continue making earth a home.

This book provides a current analysis of the legal and ethical challenges in preparing for and responding to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) crises. From past events like the Chernobyl nuclear incident in Russia or the Bhopal chemical calamity in India, to the more recent tsunami and nuclear accident in Japan or the Ebola crisis in Africa, and with the on-going threat of bioterrorism, the need to be ready to respond to CBRNE crises is uncontroversial. What is controversial is whether we are on a path that adequately prepares us for the next event. The ethical and legal scholars in this volume hold that much work remains to be done and offer this book to stimulate further reflection and dialogue around CBRNE crises. This is an indispensable book for both students and scholars of bioethics, international law, public health, as well as for regulators and administrators developing policy and legislation related to public health planning and emergency responses.

Ecosystems and Nature brings together the work of leading authorities in biodiversity research. It provides readers with a broad interdisciplinary perspective on the major issues in biodiversity, including economics, natural science, management and ethics.The collection is divided into four main sections: part I introduces some fundamental scientific and socio-economic concepts and analysis in order to illustrate the complexities involved in the human-ecosystems interface; part II deals with the valuation of ecosystems with special emphasis on the main biomes, faults, wetlands, marine systems, grasslands and agriculture; part III covers the problem of value appropriation and the relevant constraints and available policy instruments; the final section focuses on the difficult ethical issues that surround utilization and conservation of biodiversity.

In recent years there has been increased recognition of the global burden of mental disorders, which in turn has led to the expansion of preventive initiatives at the community and population levels. The application of such public health approaches to mental health raises a number of important ethical questions. The aim of this collection is to address these newly emerging issues, with special attention to the principle of prevention and the distinctive ethical challenges in mental health. The collection brings together an interdisciplinary group of experts in bioethics, mental health, public health, and global health.

This book addresses the complexity of talking about normativity in bioethics within the context of contemporary multicultural and multi-religious society. It offers original contributions by specialists in bioethics exploring new ways of understanding normativity in bioethics. In bioethical publications and debates, the concept of normativity is often used without consideration of the difficulties surrounding it, whereas there are many competing claims for normativity within bioethics. Examples of such competing normative bioethical discourses can be perceived in variations and differences in bioethical arguments within individual religions, and the opposition between bioethical arguments from specific religions and arguments from bioethicists who do not claim religious allegiance. We also cannot merely assume that a Western understanding of normative bioethics will be unproblematic in bioethics in non-Western cultures and religions. Through an analysis of normativity in Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Jewish bioethics, the book creates awareness of the complexity of normativity in bioethics. The book also covers normative bioethics outside an explicitly religiously committed context, and specific attention is paid to bioethics as an interdisciplinary endeavor. It reveals how normativity relates to empirical and global bioethics, which challenges it faces in bioethics in secular pluralistic society, and how to overcome these. By doing that, this book fills an important gap in bioethics literature.

This book explores Kierkegaard’s significance for bioethics and discusses how Kierkegaard’s existential thinking can enrich and advance current bioethical debates.

This book is aimed at analyzing the foundations of medical ethics by considering different moral theories and their implications for judgments in clinical practice and policy-making. It provides a review of the major types of ethical theory that can be applied to medical and bioethical issues concerning reproductive genetics. In response to the debate on the most adequate ethical doctrine to guide biomedical decisions, this book formulates views that capture the best elements in each, bearing in mind their differences and taking into account the specific character of medicine. No historically influential position in ethics is by itself adequate to be applied to reproductive decisions. Thus, this book attempts to offer a pluralistic approach to biomedical research and medical practice. One usually claims that there are some basic principles (non-maleficence, beneficence, confidentiality, autonomy, and justice) which constitute the foundations of bioethics and medical ethics. Yet these principles conflict with each other and one needs some criteria to solve these conflicts and to specify the scope of application of these principles. Exploring miscellaneous ethical approaches as introduced to biomedicine, particularly to reproductive genetics, the book shall elucidate their different assumptions concerning human nature and the relations between healthcare providers, recipients, and other affected parties (e.g. progeny, relatives, other patients, society). The book attempts to answer the question of whether the tension between these ethical doctrines generates conflict in the field of biomedicine or if these competing approaches could in some way complement each other. In this respect, lecturers and researchers in bioethics would be interested in this reading this book.

This book takes as its point of departure a humble cell lying on the intersection of ideas as diverse and yet interlaced as life, knowledge, commerce, governance, and ethics. It seeks to deepen the understanding of stem cell entities and the concerns, hopes, and aspirations that shape and make them viable therapeutic entities in the context of rapid globalization. Several key intersections between individual, group, and institutional relationships have become central to locating and debating the production of stem cells today. This edited collection addresses three overarching concerns: regenerating the notion of ethics, the emerging therapeutic horizons, and the position of the patient. As a whole this book seeks to explain how stem cells are accommodated, contested, and used in contemporary India and around the globe through an informed unpacking of issues underpinning contestation and promotion bestriding these technological developments. The authors offer a truly multi-disciplinary perspective, stimulating conversation between the social sciences, biological sciences and the patient. The concerns expressed and highlighted by these conversations are embedded in a vast geo-political expanse stretching from India to Euro-America and will be of great interest to academics and practitioners across fields including science technology studies, medicine and international development.

The use of the criminal law to punish those who transmit disease is a topical and controversial issue. To date, the law, and the related academic literature, has largely focused on HIV transmission. With contributions from leading practitioners and international scholars from a variety of disciplines, this volume explores the broader question of if and when it is appropriate to criminalise the transmission of contagion. The scope and application of the laws in jurisdictions such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Norway are considered, historical comparisons are examined, and options for the further development of the law are proposed.

This book provides an in-depth ethical analysis of the right to health care by contrasting privatized with socialized approaches. It pays special attention to how a socialized approach can be implemented in the context of limited resources and offers a way of integrating allocation decisions at the policy level with institutional and hands-on decision-making. It also discusses how the right to health care translates into duties on part of the members of society. In an Appendix, it suggests how, in time of need, the TRIPS Agreement allows countries to side-step patent regulations that would otherwise raise the cost of patented healthcare products beyond what a particular society is able to afford. The book is of interest not only to scholars but also to healthcare policy makers, administrators and healthcare professionals, as well as to patients themselves.

Throughout human history, every single one of us has been born from a person. So far. But that is about to change. Scientific research is on the cusp of being able to grow babies outside human bodies, from machines, for the very first time. Claire Horn takes us on a truly radical and urgent deep dive into the most challenging and pertinent questions of our age. Could artificial wombs allow women to redistribute the work of gestating? How do we protect reproductive and abortion rights? And who exactly gets access to this technology, in our vastly unequal world? In this interrogative and fascinating story of modern birth, Eve imagines with eye-opening clarity what all this might mean for the future of humanity.

Life and health sciences and biomedical studies have developed rapidly over the last few decades raising previously unanticipated ethical concerns and questions. New and emerging technologies require novel approaches, protocols and raised awareness to ensure adequate levels of biosecurity and biosafety as well as the implementation of special measures to prevent their potential misuse or dual use. This volume brings together an international collection of prominent ethics experts in health and life sciences, with the aim of providing clear and comprehensive guidelines for the establishment of efficient ethical strategies related to current and emerging biotechnologies and health research. Important current topics in research ethics including CRISPR-Cas9 technologies, gene editing, 'big data' in healthcare and life sciences, nutrition in medicine among other topics have found their place in this volume. In addition, the volume discusses the prospects for the implementation of an international unification of ethical standards in life sciences.

This book takes readers on a journey through the wide universe of bioethics, raising the following question: what is the proper attitude towards health, life, and death from the perspective of contemporary behavioral economics? Drawing on fields as diverse as economics, ethics, ecology, biology, and philosophy, this book seeks to uncover the bioethics we accomplish, not the moral principles that we advocate. This book covers life-and-death issues arranged around five themes: selves, persons, populations, species, and "Future Earth". Ultimately, the author illustrates two kinds of justice: static and dynamic. Static justice prevails whenever parties are free to bargain with each other, while dynamic justice follows from parties' interactions over time. An examination into these types of justice reveals one particularly striking phenomenon: attempts by others to tip the balance of justice have a tendency to backfire. Of primary interest to behavioral economists, this book will also appeal to scholars studying bioethics, ecology, medicine, and philosophy, as well as all people dealing with issues of health, dying, and death.

This book explores why animals, at some point, disappeared from the realm and scope of sociology. The role of sociology in the construction of a science of the 'human' has been substantial, building representations of the human sphere of life as unique. Within the sociological tradition however, animals have often been invisible, even non-existent. Through in-depth comparisons of the texts of prominent early sociologists Emile Durkheim and Edward Westermarck, Tuomivaara shows that despite this exclusion, representations of animals and human-animal relations were far more varied in early works than in the later sociological cannon. Addressing a significant gap in the interdisciplinary field of animal studies, Tuomivaara presents a close reading of the historical treatment of animals in the works of Durkheim and Westermarck to determine how the human-animal boundary was established in sociological theory. The diverse forms in which animals and 'the animal' appear in the works of early classical sociology are charted and explored, alongside the sociological themes that bring animals into these texts. Situated in contemporary theory, from critical animal studies to posthumanism, this important book lays the groundwork for a disciplinary shift away from this sharp human-animal dualism.

This book assembles essays by thinkers who were at the center of the German post World War II development of ethical thought in medicine. It records their strategies for overcoming initial resistance among physicians and philosophers and (in the East) politicians. This work traces their different approaches, such as socialist versus liberal bioethics; illustrates their attempt to introduce a culture of dialogue in medicine; and examines their moral ambiguities inherent to the institutionalization of bioethics and in law. Furthermore, the essays in this work pay special attention to the problem of ethics expertise in the context of a pluralism, which the intellectual mainstream of the country seeks to reduce to "varieties of post-traditionalism". Finally, this book addresses the problem of "patient autonomy",and highlights the difficulty of harmonizing commitment to professional integrity with the project of enhancing physician's responsiveness to suffering patients. As these essays illustrate, the development of bioethics in Germany does not follow a linear line of progressiveness, but rather retains a sense of the traditional ethos of the guild. An ethos, however, that is challenged by moral pluralism in such a way that, even today, still requires adequate solutions. A must read for all academics interested in the origins and the development of bioethics.

This book surveys the distinctions that underlie the unbound potential and existential risks of life expansion and radical modifications posed by a transhuman world. Humanness is in flux as human bodies are being hacked and altered in their quest for super wellness, super intelligence and super longevity. Now is the time to discuss how best to think about dealing with bodies that have been hacked to exceed natural physical limits or more technically, species typical functioning. Enter the advent of transhumanism to take uncertainty by the horns. According to transhumanists, death is unnecessary and medical conventions undermine the possibility to radically evolve. To biohackers, there is no need to wait to explore the risks that conventional medicine dares not. This book is of interest to anyone interested in tapping into this growing movement of modifying the human body as it is right now.