This volume contributes to the growing literature on the morality of procreation and parenting. About half of the chapters take up questions about the morality of bringing children into existence. They discuss the following questions: Is it wrong to create human life? Is there a connection between the problem of evil and the morality of procreation? Could there be a duty to procreate? How do the environmental harms imposed by procreation affect its moral status? Given these costs, is the value of establishing genetic ties ever significant enough to render procreation morally permissible? And how should government respond to peoples' motives for procreating? The other half of the volume considers moral and political questions about adoption and parenting. One chapter considers whether the choice to become a parent can be rational. The two following chapters take up the regulation of adoption, focusing on whether the special burdens placed on adoptive parents, as compared to biological parents, can be morally justified. The book concludes by considering how we should conceive of adequacy standards in parenting and what resources we owe to children. This collection builds on existing literature by advancing new arguments and novel perspectives on existing debates. It also raises new issues deserving of our attention. As a whole it is sure to generate further philosophical debate on pressing and rich questions surrounding the bearing and rearing of children.

The multidisciplinary book assesses the legal and economic uncertainties surrounding the collection, storage, provision and economic development of biological samples (tumors, tissues, cells) and associated personal data related to oncology. Public, partly public and private sector actors in the field of cancer care and research hold collections supported by significant public and social funding. Under certain conditions, particularly in the context of networking (sometimes promoted by public authorities), these collections can also represent major economic assets and scientific resources. However, this involves a number of issues and institutional constraints: legal: the will of the source person; non-pecuniary damage; freedom to establish collections; competence in deciding on their use; legal frameworks for their distribution; desire for return on investment for public institutions, notably in terms of industrial and intellectual property. economic: cost of establishing and running biological resource centres; destroying resources; emerging markets; profit sharing. public health policy choices: prioritisation of therapeutic measures over research (fundamental or clinical trials); conservation of resources; promotion of scientific (and not commercial) value of collections. The establishment, heritage recognition ("patrimonialisation"), development and sharing of these resources thus merit our calling into question present practices and their evolution, as well as the leverage available to public authorities (incentives, legislation, regulation) in a context where norms emerge from professional practice to become widely used in collaborative networks. Filling a gap in the current literature on law and economics, which pays little heed to these specific considerations, this book explores these considerations to bring to light the economic implications of ethical choices and governance issues in the health sector (structural organisation of local, national and European actors in oncology). It is intended for researchers in fields such as law, economics and biomedical sciences, as well as for public policymakers.

This book explores, through case studies, the interplay between religion, culture, government, and politics in diverse societies on questions arising in the domain of bioethics. The case studies draw from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including history, theology, law, bioethics, public policy, science, and medicine. The text's global perspective permits a comparison of the differing approaches adopted by countries facing similar bioethical quandaries and the extent to which religion has or has not been instrumental in addressing such dilemmas. Secular and religious societies across the globe are being confronted with complex questions involving religious belief and the extent to which specific religious perspectives have in the past or should in the future be adopted as official policy. Bioethical issues involving the interplay of religion and government have become particularly notable in recent years. How these issues are resolved has major implications for individuals, healthcare providers, and the future of medical research and medical care. Topics explored among the chapters include: Homosexuality: Sin, Crime, Pathology, Identity, Behavior Medical Error: Truthtelling, Apology, and Forgiveness Refusal of Medical Treatment Medical Deportation Case Study: Nazism, Religion, and Human Experimentation The New Frontier: Cloning Case Studies in Society, Religion, and Bioethics will find an engaged audience among researchers and scholars in history, religion/theology, medicine, and bioethics interested in the influence of religion on bioethical decision-making. Students-particularly upper-level undergraduate and graduate students interested in bioethics, humanities, and theology-will find the text helpful in understanding the processes through which religion may serve as a basis for both societal policy and law and individual decision-making in health-related matters.

This book brings together an international collection of experts in reproductive ethics, law, disability studies, and medicine to explore the challenging future of reproduction and children. From the medical to the social and from the financial to the legal, the authors explore the expanding impact of reproductive genetics on our society. New advances in genetic technologies are revolutionizing the practice of reproductive medicine. We have expanded our ability to detect genetic changes in embryos and fetuses in ways that potentially allow to identify, treat, or prevent a growing range of diseases. The development of gene-editing technologies raises questions about the possibility of removing disease-causing variants from embryos before pregnancy implantation. The growing sophistication of prenatal genomic sequencing offers us glimpses into the whole genome of the developing fetus. And, the increasingly sophisticated science of 'gene matching' allows us greater and greater foreknowledge of how the genomes of two individuals will combine in a future child. This is an indispensable book on the newest developments in bioethics caused by the sciences. Chapter 5 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

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.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of philosophical, social, ethical, and legal challenges arising as a consequences of current advances in neurosciences and neurotechnology. It starts by offering an overview of fundamental concepts such as mental privacy, personal autonomy, mental integrity, and responsibility, among others. In turn, it discusses the influence of possible misuses or uncontrolled uses of neurotechnology on those concepts, and, more in general, on human rights and equality. Then, it makes some original proposals to deal with the main ethical, legal, and social problems associated to the use of neurotechnology, both in medicine and in everyday life, suggesting possible policies to protect privacy, neural data, and intimacy. Crossing the borders between humanities, natural sciences, bio-medicine, and engineering, and taking into account geographical and cultural differences, this book offers a conceptual debate around policy and decision making concerning some of the key neuroethical challenges of our times. It offers a comprehensive guide to the most important issues of neurojustice and neuroprotection, together with a set of new paradigms to face some of the most urgent neuroethical problems of our times.

In this thought-provoking and innovative book, Kendra Coulter examines the diversity of work done with, by, and for animals. Interweaving human-animal studies, labor theories and research, and feminist political economy, Coulter develops a unique analysis of the accomplishments, complexities, problems, and possibilities of multispecies and interspecies labor. She fosters a nuanced, multi-faceted approach to labor that takes human and animal well-being seriously, and that challenges readers to not only think deeply and differently about animals and work, but to reflect on the potential for interspecies solidarity. The result is an engaging, expansive, and path-making text.

Is bioethics only about medicine and health care? Law? Philosophy? Social issues? No, on all accounts. It embraces all these and more. In this book, fifteen notable scholars from the North West of England critically explore the main approaches to bioethics-and make a scratch on its polished surface.

This collection addresses whether ethicists, like authorities in other fields, can speak as experts in their subject matter. Though ethics consultation is a growing practice in medical contexts, there remain difficult questions about the role of ethicists in professional decision-making. Contributors examine the nature and plausibility of moral expertise, the relationship between character and expertise, the nature and limits of moral authority, how one might become a moral expert, and the trustworthiness of moral testimony. This volume engages with the growing literature in these debates and offers new perspectives from both academics and practitioners. The readings will be of particular interest to bioethicists, clinicians, ethics committees, and students of social epistemology. These new essays promise to advance discussions in the professionalization and accreditation of ethics consultation.

This book brings together the debate concerning personal identity (in metaphysics) and central topics in biomedical ethics (conception of birth and death; autonomy, living wills and paternalism). Based on a metaphysical account of personal identity in the sense of persistence and conditions for human beings, conceptions for beginning of life, and death are developed. Based on a biographical account of personality, normative questions concerning autonomy, euthanasia, living wills and medical paternalism are dealt with. By these means the book shows that "personal identity" has different meanings which have to be distinguished so that human persistence and personality can be used to deal with central questions in biomedical ethics.

The essays collected in this volume provide students of ethics with essential tools for making sense of emerging biotechnical capacities and the turbulent power relations these capacities are bringing into the world. Unlike previous reference works in bioethics, which focus on specific domains of human activity (such as genetic research or biomedicine), this volume directs students' attention to the underlying cultural and institutional forces that shape how biotechnologists approach the world, and teaches students how to weigh the ethical significance of these forces. This innovative approach to the ethics of biotechnology, detailed in the volume's introduction, equips students to track the dynamic interplay of biology, digital technology and the high-tech economy which is remaking the living world today and the human relation to it.

Drawing on the controversial case of "Ashley X," a girl with severe developmental disabilities who received interventionist medical treatment to limit her growth and keep her body forever small-a procedure now known as the "Ashley Treatment"-Reconsidering Intellectual Disability explores important questions at the intersection of disability theory, Christian moral theology, and bioethics. What are the biomedical boundaries of acceptable treatment for those not able to give informed consent? Who gets to decide when a patient cannot communicate their desires and needs? Should we accept the dominance of a form of medicine that identifies those with intellectual impairments as pathological objects in need of the normalizing bodily manipulations of technological medicine? In a critical exploration of contemporary disability theory, Jason Reimer Greig contends that L'Arche, a federation of faith communities made up of people with and without intellectual disabilities, provides an alternative response to the predominant bioethical worldview that sees disability as a problem to be solved. Reconsidering Intellectual Disability shows how a focus on Christian theological tradition's moral thinking and practice of friendship with God offers a way to free not only people with intellectual disabilities but all people from the objectifying gaze of modern medicine. L'Arche draws inspiration from Jesus's solidarity with the "least of these" and a commitment to Christian friendship that sees people with profound cognitive disabilities not as anomalous objects of pity but as fellow friends of God. This vital act of social recognition opens the way to understanding the disabled not as objects to be fixed but as teachers whose lives can transform others and open a new way of being human.

This book takes the contentious issue of designer babies and argues against the liberal eugenic current of bioethics that commends the logic and choice regimes of selective reproduction. Against conceptions of Procreative Beneficence that trade on a disregard for the gifts of maternal bodies, it seeks to recover a thought of maternal giving and a more hospitable ethic of generational beneficence. Exploring themes of responsibility, gift and natality, the book refigures the experience of reproduction as the site of an ethical response to future generations, where refusal to choose one's children is one virtuous response. The book will appeal to anyone with an interest in reproductive ethics, feminist thought and those seeking principled grounds for resisting the technologies of choosing children.

Synthetic Biology is already an object of intensive debate. However, to a great extent the discussion to date has been concerned with fundamental ethical, religious and philosophical questions. By contrast, based on an investigation of the field's scientific and technological character, this book focuses on new functionalities provided by synthetic biology and explores the associated opportunities and risks. Following an introduction to the subject and a discussion of the most central paradigms and methodologies, the book provides an overview of the structure of this field of science and technology. It informs the reader about the current stage of development, as well as topical problems and potential opportunities in important fields of application. But not only the science itself is in focus. In order to investigate its broader impact, ecological as well as ethical implications will be considered, paving the way for a discussion of responsibilities in the context of a field at a transitional crossroads between basic and applied science. In closing, the requirements for a suitable regulatory framework are discussed. The book is intended as a source of information and orientation for researchers, students and practitioners in the natural sciences and technology assessment; for members of scientific and technological, governmental and funding institutions; and for members of the general public interested in essential information on the current status, prospects and implications of synthetic biology.

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.

Argues for a return to a positive view of the other via a personalist philosophy of being offered by Mounier, Marcel, and Wojtyla, and deepened by participation, belonging, and possibility of contributing to the good of all. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, philosophy and anthropology. Disability studies are often regarded as practical studies as opposed to the apparently inevitable theorizing of philosophy or theology. However, this book's methodology of explicitly linking disability studies with philosophy and theology demonstrates their complementarity.

Why does a hospital need an ethics consultation? And what about this counselling is ethical? The book explains the background of the development of clinical ethics counselling. It provides new insights into serious decision-making conflicts in everyday clinical life and uncovers the disputes that followed in public. In the search for the ethical understanding of clinical ethics counselling, the book comes across previously unexplored evidence. Step by step, a system is reconstructed that reveals the shape of a significant philosophical school of thought.

This book explores the new ways in which biology is becoming technology. The revolutionary iPS cell technology has made it possible to turn human skin and blood cells into pluripotent stem cells, thus providing an unprecedented opportunity to study the pathophysiology of diseases, understand human developmental biology, and generate new therapies. Drawing from a rich ethnographic study, Meskus traces the making of the iPS cell technology through the perspectives of clinical translation, laboratory experimentation, and tissue donation by voluntary patients. Discussing non-human agency, the embodied and affective basis of knowledge production, and the material politics of science, the book develops the idea of an instrumentality-care continuum as a fundamental dynamic of biomedical craft. This continuum, Meskus argues, opens up a novel perspective to the commercialization and industrial-scale appropriation of human biology, and thereby to the future of ethical biomedical research.

The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Bioethics is an outstanding resource for anyone with an interest in feminist bioethics, with chapters covering topics from justice and power to the climate crisis. Comprising forty-two chapters by emerging and established scholars, the volume is divided into six parts: I Foundations of feminist bioethics II Identity and identifications III Science, technology and research IV Health and social care V Reproduction and making families VI Widening the scope of feminist bioethics The volume is essential reading for anyone with an interest in bioethics or feminist philosophy, and will prove an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers and advanced students Chapters 2, 22, and 30 of this book will soon be freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license at www.taylorfrancis.com

This book provides extensive and critical engagement with some of the most recent and compelling arguments favoring abortion choice. It features original essays from leading and emerging philosophers, bioethicists and medical professionals that present philosophically sophisticated and novel arguments against abortion choice.

This book questions the notions of person, personality, dignity, and other connected notions such as (informed) consent, and discusses new perspectives on categories that allow ethical debates in medicine to overcome morals and ordinary religious schemes. The book states that one has to be careful when thinking about situations in terms of notions and principles that have been obtained in similar situations. Though this book is mostly philosophical, it is also of great practical interest to healthcare givers. It warns caregivers not to rely too much on notions such as person, autonomy, and consent, which are supposedly firm but can be proven to be unreliable in spite of appearances. Furthermore, this work warns against a narrow anthropologisation of ethics which would make technophobian positions unavoidable. On the contrary, this book is open to robotics and offers - among other things - a sustained exploration of the notion of intimacy.

The fur trade is a multi-million-dollar industry. It is estimated that over 100 million animals are killed in fur farms worldwide annually. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the state of fur factory farming worldwide, and an ethical critique of the main arguments propounded by the fur industry. Consideration is also given to an attempt to justify fur farming through the concept of "Welfur." Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey argue that from any ethical perspective, fur factory farming fails basic moral tests.

The Disability Bioethics Reader is the first introduction to the field of bioethics presented through the lens of critical disability studies and the philosophy of disability. Introductory and advanced textbooks in bioethics focus almost entirely on issues that disproportionately affect disabled people and that centrally deal with becoming or being disabled. However, such textbooks typically omit critical philosophical reflection on disability. Directly addressing this omission, this volume includes 36 chapters, most appearing here for the first time, that cover key areas pertaining to disability bioethics, such as: state-of-the-field analyses of modern medicine, bioethics, and disability theory health, disease, and the philosophy of medicine issues at the edge- and end-of-life, including physician-aid-in-dying, brain death, and minimally conscious states enhancement and biomedical technology invisible disabilities, chronic pain, and chronic illness implicit bias and epistemic injustice in health care disability, quality of life, and well-being race, disability, and healthcare justice connections between disability theory and aging, trans, and fat studies prenatal testing, abortion, and reproductive justice. The Disability Bioethics Reader, unlike traditional bioethics textbooks, also engages with decades of empirical and theoretical scholarship in disability studies-scholarship that spans the social sciences and humanities-and gives serious consideration to the history of disability activism.

Drawing together interview material, medical publications, and first-hand accounts, this book shows that what is being remade in the burgeoning medical field of face transplantation is not only the lives of patients, but also the very ways that state institutions, surgeons, and families make sense of rights, claims for inclusion, and life itself.

This book examines the position of children who provide tissue to potentially save the life of another. It questions whether child donors of all ages have been treated appropriately and whether they are sufficiently protected in acting as tissue donors, and ultimately considers whether a new regulatory response is needed to benefit donor children. The book couples a legal exposition of the donor child's position with the medico-ethical reality of clinical practice. In recent years, a growing body of literature concerning the clinical experiences and outcomes for child donors has emerged. This book adds to this by examining another dimension - the regulatory frameworks at play. It examines the ethical arguments for and against children acting as tissue donors and provides an original analysis of the legal and non-legal regulatory frameworks governing children's participation in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. It combines these doctrinal and theoretical approaches with insights into clinical practice gained from the results of qualitative research conducted with health professionals. The analysis inevitably explores the more general issues of children's right to make medical decisions, the role of parents in decision-making, the value of the best interests test and alternative (legal and ethical) standards, rights of participation of children before the courts, and the role of law and other forms of regulation in a clinical context.