This Dictionary presents a broad range of topics relevant in present-day global bioethics. With more than 500 entries, this dictionary covers organizations working in the field of global bioethics, international documents concerning bioethics, personalities that have played a role in the development of global bioethics, as well as specific topics in the field.The book is not only useful for students and professionals in global health activities, but can also serve as a basic tool that explains relevant ethical notions and terms. The dictionary furthers the ideals of cosmopolitanism: solidarity, equality, respect for difference and concern with what human beings- and specifically patients - have in common, regardless of their backgrounds, hometowns, religions, gender, etc. Global problems such as pandemic diseases, disasters, lack of care and medication, homelessness and displacement call for global responses.This book demonstrates that a moral vision of global health is necessary and it helps to quickly understand the basic ideas of global bioethics.

Animal Bioethics is an important reference work for students of biomedicine and related fields, scientific researchers, and members of organizations for the protection of animal rights and welfare. The philosophical background of monistic and dualistic concepts of the human-animal relationship is considered in detail. Experimental models in drug development and pain testing are analyzed, and the translational aspect of in vivo experiments discussed. One chapter is dedicated to neuroethics, taking into account the importance of animal experiments for examining brain function. Finally, an overview of modern legislation related to animal experiments is given, the ethical basis of the principles of Good Laboratory Practice is assessed, and the importance of animal bioethics for writing scientific projects is shown.

People have always sought medical care that is tailored to every individual patient. Alongside with the historical development of institutions of care, the vision of personal and 'holistic' care persisted. Patient-centred medicine, interpersonal communication and shared decision making have become central to medical practice and services. This evolving vision of 'personalized medicine' is in the forefront of medicine, creating debates among ethicists, philosophers and sociologists of medicine about the nature of disease and the definition of wellness, the impact on the daily life of patients, as well as its implications on low-income countries. Is increased 'precision' also an improvement on the personal aspects of care or erosion of privacy? Do 'precise' and 'personalized' approach marginalize public health, and can this care be personalized without attention to culture, economy and society? The book provides a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary discussion of the ethos and ethics of precision/personal medicine, involving scientists who have shaped the field, in dialogue with ethicists, social scientists and philosophers of science. The contributing scholars come from all over the world and from different cultural backgrounds providing reflective perspectives of history of ideas, critical theory and technology assessment, together with the actual work done by pioneers in the field. It explores issues such as global justice, gender, public health, pharmaceutical industry, international law and religion, and explores themes discussed in relation to personalized medicine such as new-born screening and disorders of consciousness. This book will be of interest to academicians in bioethics, history of medicine, social sciences of medicine as well as general educated readers.

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 open access book offers a framework for understanding how the Holocaust has shaped and continues to shape medical ethics, health policy, and questions related to human rights around the world. The field of bioethics continues to face questions of social and medical controversy that have their roots in the lessons of the Holocaust, such as debates over beginning-of-life and medical genetics, end-of-life matters such as medical aid in dying, the development of ethical codes and regulations to guide human subject research, and human rights abuses in vulnerable populations. As the only example of medically sanctioned genocide in history, and one that used medicine and science to fundamentally undermine human dignity and the moral foundation of society, the Holocaust provides an invaluable framework for exploring current issues in bioethics and society today. This book, therefore, is of great value to all current and future ethicists, medical practitioners and policymakers - as well as laypeople.

How does death help us understand the living? Death is more than the last event of life; it is interwoven into our growth, development, protection against disease, and more. It influences the direction of entire species via the cycle of a lifespan, and it involves asking many fascinating questions. How do we differentiate between life and death, though? How do we know when a person, animal, or cell is really dead? How much grey area is there in the science? Why do we age? Can we do anything about it? Scientifically, there's much we can learn about a living thing from its cells. In all living things, cells seem to carry "death" gene programs. Some living organisms have created systems to use these to their own advantage. Humans, for example, use the death of specific cells to hone our immune system and to give us fingernails and hair. Perhaps the most dramatic use occurs during the metamorphosis of insects and frogs. Even single-celled organisms use "quorum sensing" to eliminate some cells to ensure the overall survival of their colony in harsh environments. Thus, there is more to death than just dying. This latest book from science writer Gary C. Howard ties together the many ways that death helps us understand life. He synthesizes the involvement and relation of cells, tissues, organisms, and populations, explaining what happens at the end of life. Between discussions about popular topics such as the ethics of extending life and cell regeneration, Howard also answers fascinating questions about life and death. The resulting book examines how the end of life is determined and what we can learn from this process.

The interest in what can be considered 'posthumanism' has surged over the past few years. There is no surprise as to why, given the urgency and immanence of a likely sixth mass extinction event, and the catastrophic consequences of global warming. These processes, all of which fundamentally rest on the foundations of human practices and abuses, are forcing us to rethink our place in existence. The foundations of this position have a history firmly rooted in the daily practices and beliefs of Western cultures. The Contemporary Posthuman confronts these assumptions of truth, head-on. The author follows his conceptual journey with practical steps for putting his philosophy into practice, by drawing on philosophy, design, art, and architecture.

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.

This volume is designed to impart the fundamental concepts in experimental pharmacology, research methodology and biostatistics. Through this book, the readers will learn about different methods involved in drug discovery, experimental animals and their care, equipments and the various bioassays used in experimental pharmacology. This book contains special sections on various drug screening methods involved in the evaluation of different body systems. Certain sections provide the healthcare professionals with the knowledge necessary to interpret clinical research articles, design clinical studies, and learn essential concepts in biostatistics in an expedient and concise manner. Basic principles and applications of simple analytical methods employed in drug analysis are well written under one section. It focuses on the basic and advanced laboratory techniques and also on computer simulated data, written extensively under the Biostatistics section. The methods used for drug analysis have been described in adequate detail with cross-references for further studies and comprehension. Overall, the book is designed systematically with four broad sections with extensive subdivisions for easy tracking, interpretation, and understanding.

This book offers a unique description of how phenomenology can help professionals from medical, environmental and social fields to explore notions such as interaffectivity, empathy, epoche, reduction, and intersubjective encounter. Written by a group of top scholars, it uniquely covers the relationship between phenomenology and bioethics, and focuses not only on medical cases, but also on the environment and emerging technologies. This variety of themes, whilst including techno-ethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics, and medical ethics, is conducive to appreciating broadly how phenomenology can improve our quality of our life. Despite its difficult themes, the book appeals to an audience of both academics and professionals who are willing to understand how to increase the quality of care in their professional field. Chapter 8 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book fills a gap in the literature on the Precautionary Principle by placing the principle within the wider context of precautionary reasoning and uses philosophical arguments and case studies to demonstrate when it does-and does not-apply. The book invites the reader to take a step back from the controversy surrounding the Precautionary Principle and consider the overarching rationales for responding to threats to the environment or public health. It provides practical guidance and probing insight for the intended audience, including scholars, students, journalists, and policymakers.

With the development of new direct interfaces between the human brain and computer systems, the time has come for an in-depth ethical examination of the way these neuronal interfaces may support an interaction between the mind and cyberspace. In so doing, this book does not hesitate to blend disciplines including neurobiology, philosophy, anthropology and politics. It also invites society, as a whole, to seek a path in the use of these interfaces enabling humanity to prosper while avoiding the relevant risks. As such, the volume is the first extensive study in cyberneuroethics, a subject matter which is certain to have a significant impact in the 21st century and beyond.

This Element examines the main ethical aspects of consciousness It argues that consciousness is not intrinsically valuable but has value or disvalue for individuals depending on its phenomenology (what it is like to be aware) and content (what one is aware of). These two components of awareness shape normative judgments about how ordered, disordered, altered, restored, diminished and suppressed conscious states can benefit or harm individuals. They also influence moral judgments about whether intentionally causing these states is permissible or impermissible and how these states can affect behavior. After describing its neurobiological basis, this Element discusses ethical and legal issues in six categories of consciousness: phenomenal and access consciousness; intraoperative awareness; prolonged disorders of consciousness, dissociative disorders, the role of consciousness in determining death; and altering and suppressing awareness near the end of life.

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.

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.

This book brings together a number of essays that are optimistic about the ways certain neuroscientific insights might advance philosophical ethics, and other essays that are more circumspect about the relevance of neuroscience to philosophical ethics. As a whole, the essays form a self-reflective body of work that simultaneously seeks to derive normative ethical implications from neuroscience, and to question whether and how that may be possible at all. In doing so, the collection brings together psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, ethics, and philosophy of science. Neuroscience seeks to understand the biological systems that guide human behavior and cognition. Normative ethics, on the other hand, seeks to understand the system of abstract moral principles dictating how people ought to behave. By studying how the human brain makes moral judgments, can philosophers learn anything about the nature of morality itself? A growing number of researchers believe that neuroscience can, indeed, provide insights into the questions of philosophical ethics. However, even these advocates acknowledge that the path from neuroscientific is to normative ethical ought can be quite fraught.

This book offers new essays exploring concepts and applications of nonideal theory in bioethics. Nonideal theory refers to an analytic approach to moral and political philosophy (especially in relation to justice), according to which we should not assume that there will be perfect compliance with principles, that there will be favorable circumstances for just institutions and right action, or that reasoners are capable of being impartial. Nonideal theory takes the world as it actually is, in all of its imperfections. Bioethicists have called for greater attention to how nonideal theory can serve as a guide in the messy realities they face daily. Although many bioethicists implicitly assume nonideal theory in their work, there is the need for more explicit engagement with this theoretical outlook. A nonideal approach to bioethics would start by examining the sociopolitical realities of healthcare and the embeddedness of moral actors in those realities. How are bioethicists to navigate systemic injustices when completing research, giving guidance for patient care, and contributing to medical and public health policies? When there are no good options and when moral agents are enmeshed in their sociopolitical viewpoints, how should moral theorizing proceed? What do bioethical issues and principles look like from the perspective of historically marginalized persons? These are just a few of the questions that motivate nonideal theory within bioethics. This book begins in Part I with an overview of the foundational tenets of nonideal theory, what nonideal theory can offer bioethics, and why it may be preferable to ideal theory in addressing moral dilemmas in the clinic and beyond. In Part II, authors discuss applications of nonideal theory in many areas of bioethics, including reflections on environmental harms, racism and minority health, healthcare injustices during incarceration and detention, and other vulnerabilities experienced by patients from clinical and public health perspectives. The chapters within each section demonstrate the breadth in scope that nonideal theory encompasses, bringing together diverse theorists and approaches into one collection.

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.

This book comprehensively reviews the anatomy, physiology, genetics and pathology of laboratory animals as well as the principles and practices of using laboratory animals for biomedical research.It covers the design of buildings used for laboratory animals, quality control of laboratory animals, and toxicology, and discusses various animal models used for human diseases. It also highlights aspects, such as handling and restraint and administration of drugs, as well as breeding and feeding of laboratory animals, and provides guidelines for developing meaningful experiments using laboratory animals.Further, the book discusses various alternatives to animal experiments for drug and chemical testing, including their advantages over the current approaches. Lastly, it examines the potential effect of harmful pathogens on the physiology of laboratory animals and discusses the state of art in in vivo imaging techniques.The book is a useful resource for research scientists, laboratory animal veterinarians, and students of laboratory animal medicine.

This book addresses new and evolving thorny issues in clinical ethics consultation. It is a book for our time. The contributors provide essential critical reflection on the standards and methods of training clinical ethics consultants as the field seeks to professionalize. This collection incorporates both North American and European experts, offering different perspectives on issues such as marginalized populations, the opioid epidemic, complex discharge, micro-managing families, and continually challenging issues at the end-of-life, such as determinations of brain death, physician-assisted death, and futility. The authors engage the complexities of choosing for others when making decisions for incapacitated adults and pediatric patients. This volume engages with the growing literature in these debates and offers new perspectives from both academics and practitioners. The readings are of particular interest to bioethicists, clinicians, ethics committees, and students in bioethics and beyond. These new essays advance discussions in the professionalization and certification of ethics consultants and offer crucial insights on new and evolving thorny issues in the practice of clinical ethics consultation.

This book is a collection of essays by scientists, historians, philosophers of science, and students. The essays meld biotechnology into science fiction stories and thereby open a conversation about the morality of what we may be one day, and what it may mean to be human as our biotechnological endeavors continue to evolve. The biotechnology "revolution," launched on a global scale many decades ago, has taken a direct course toward re-creating life. Yet there are still many choices to be made in shaping the future that it may one day make possible. The book motivates readers toward deep reflection and continual discourse, which are essential if biotechnology is to evolve in ethical, meaningful, and sustainable ways.

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 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 describes the alarming condition of agriculture in the Anthropocene, when the ethical conception of agriculture as a service of common utility for both society and environment has progressively been marginalized. The ethical utility of agriculture has been sidetracked with the increasing industrialisation of society, the involvement of agriculture in the business-as-usual economy, and the consequential environmental and societal impacts it has had. Thus, re-establishing a meaningful bridge between ethics and agriculture is necessary. A relatively new science (ecology) with both a new epistemological tool (that of the ecosystem concept), and a unique narrative of sustainable development, can help bridge this gap. This book focuses on ethics as a lever for raising scientific, technical, social, economic and political solutions to adopt in agriculture as a model of symbiotic relationships between man and nature. It provides a detailed discussion of the ecological intensification practices in order to maximize ecological and ethical services, wherein agroecosystems will follow.