The main question explored by the book is: How can cross-border access to human genetic resources, such as blood or DNA samples, be governed in such a way as to achieve equity for vulnerable populations in developing countries? The book situates the field of genomic and genetic research within global health and research frameworks, describing the concerns that have been raised about the potential unfairness in exchanges during recent decades. Access to and sharing in the benefits of human biological resources are aspects not regulated by any international legal framework such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, which applies only to the exchange of plants, animals and microorganisms, as well as to associated traditional knowledge. Examples of genetic research perceived as exploitative are provided in order to illustrate the legal vacuum concerning the global governance of human genetic resources. The main conclusions drawn from the legal and ethical analysis are: • Benefit sharing is crucial in order to avoid the exploitation of developing countries in human genetic research. • With functioning research ethics committees, undue inducement is less of a concern in genetic research than in other areas of medical research (e.g. clinical trials). • Concerns remain over research involving indigenous populations; accordingly, recommendations are provided. In drawing these conclusions, the book addresses in detail a highly pressing topic in global bioethics and international law. In this regard, it combines bioethical arguments with jurisprudence, in particular with reference to the law of equity and the legal concepts of duress (coercion), unconscionable dealing, and undue inducement.

This book is a critical examination of certain basic issues and themes crucial to understanding how ethics currently interfaces with health care and biomedical research. Beginning with an overview of the field, it proceeds through a delineation of such key notions as trust and uncertainty, dialogue involving talk and listening, the vulnerability of the patient against the asymmetric power of the health professional, along with professional and individual responsibility. It emphasizes several themes fundamental to ethics and health care: (1) the work of ethics requires strict focus on the specific situational understanding of each involved person. (2) Moral issues, at least those intrinsic to each clinical encounter, are presented solely within the contexts of their actual occurrence; therefore, ethics must not only be practical but empirical in its approach. (3) Each particular situation is in its own way imprecise and uncertain and the different types and dimensions of imprecision and uncertainty are critical for everyone involved. (4) Finally, medicine and health care more broadly are governed by the effort to make sense of the healer’s experiences with the patient, whose own experiences and interpretations are ingredient to what the healer seeks to understand and eventually treat. In addition to providing a way to develop ethical considerations in clinical life and research projects, the book proposes that narratives provide the finest way to state and grapple with these themes and issues, whether in classrooms or real-life situations. It concludes with a prospective analysis of newly emerging issues presented by and within the new genetics, which, together within a focus on the phenomenon of birth, leads to an clearer understanding of human life.

In 2009 the University Medicine Greifswald launched the “Greifswald Approach to Individualized Medicine� (GANI_MED) to implement biomarker-based individualized diagnostic and therapeutic strategies in clinical settings. Individualized Medicine (IM) has led not only to controversies about its potentials, but also about its societal, ethical and health economic implications. This anthology focusses on these areas and includes – next to clinical examples illustrating how the integrated analysis of biomarkers leads to significant improvement of therapeutic outcomes for a subgroup of patients – chapters about the definition, history and epistemology of IM. Additionally there is a focus on conceptual philosophical questions as well as challenges for applied research ethics (informed consent process, the IT-based consent management and the handling of incidental findings). Finally it pays attention to health economic aspects. The possibilities of IM to initiate a paradigm shift in the German health care provision are investigated. Furthermore, it is asked whether the G-DRG system is ready for the implementation of such approaches into clinical routine.

How can we accept that we ought to stop smoking, follow a diet, exercise, or take medications? The goal of this book is to describe the mechanisms of patients’ adherence to long-term therapies, whose improvement, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), would be more beneficial than any biomedical progress. For example, approximately half of the patients do not regularly follow medical prescriptions, resulting in deleterious effects on people’s health and a strong impact on health expenditure. This book describes how our beliefs, desires, and emotions intervene in our choices concerning our health, by referring to concepts developed within the framework of the philosophy of mind. In particular, it tries to explain how we can choose between an immediate pleasure and a remote reward—preserving our health and our life. We postulate that such an “intertemporal� choice can be directed by a “principle of foresight� which leads us to give priority to the future. Just like patients’ non-adherence to prescribed medications, doctors often don’t always do what they should: They are non-adherent to good practice guidelines. We propose that what was recently de-scribed as “clinical inertia� could also represent a case of myopia: From time to time doctors fail to consider the long-term interests of their patient. Both patients’ non-adherence and doctors’ clinical inertia represent major barriers to the efficiency of care. However, it is also necessary to respect patients’ autonomy. The analysis of relationship between mind and care which is provided in this book sheds new light on the nature of the therapeutic alliance between doctor and patient, solving the dilemma between the ethical principles of beneficence and autonomy.

This book provides the reader with a theoretical and practical understanding of two health care delivery models: the patient/child centred care and family-centred care. Both are fundamental to caring for children in healthcare organizations. The authors address their application in a variety of paediatric healthcare contexts, as well as an understanding of legal and ethical issues they raise. Each model is increasingly pursued as a vehicle for guiding the delivery of health care in the best interests of children. Such models of health care delivery shape health care policies, programs, facility design, resource allocation decisions and day-to-day interactions among patients, families, physicians and other health care professionals. To maximize the health and ethical benefits these models offer, there must be shared understanding of what the models entail, as well as the ethical and legal synergies and tensions they can create. This book is a valuable resource for paediatricians, nurses, trainees, graduate students, practitioners of ethics and health policy.

This work sets the stage regarding debates about paternalism and health care for years to come. The anthology is organized around four parts: i) The concept of paternalism and theoretical issues regarding the idea of anti-paternalism, ii) strategies for justifying different forms of paternalism, iii) paternalism in psychiatry and psychotherapy, iv) paternalism and public health, and v) paternalism and reproductive medicine. Medical paternalism was arguably one of the main drivers of debates in medical ethics and has led to a wide acknowledgement of the value of patient autonomy. However, more recent developments in health care, such as the increasing significance of public health measures and the commercialization of medical services, have led to new social circumstances and hence to the need to rethink issues regarding paternalism. This work provides an invaluable source for many scholars and practitioners, since it deals in new and original ways with one of the main and oldest issue in health care ethics.

This book puts the ethics, policy and politics of stem cells into context in a way that helps readers understand why past and current issues have developed the way they have and what the implications are for their work going forward. It also addresses emerging issues as the field progresses towards clinical and industrial uses. While there is a superabundance of material on the ethics of embryo use and questions of embryonic "personhood," there is little that covers what practicing scientists and managers need to know in order to plan and execute responsible research. Furthermore, researchers funded by the NIH are required to have ethics training as a condition of the grant. As such, this book is an essential resource to all of these pre-professional students whether they plan to move into industry, government or academia.

At the time of the first edition of Principles of Cancer Biotherapy in 1987, this book represented the first comprehensive textbook on biological therapy. In 1991, when the second edition was published, there was still some doubt on the part of many oncologists and cancer researchers as to the therapeutic value of these new approaches. By 2003 and the fourth edition, it was generally agreed that biopharmaceuticals were producing major opportunities for new cancer therapies. Cancer biotherapy has now truly matured into the fourth modality of cancer treatment. This fifth revised edition describes the tremendous progress that has been made in recent years using biologicals in cancer treatment. This book summarizes an evolving science and a rapidly changing medical practice in biotherapy. In this new millennium, it is now possible to envision a much more diversified system of cancer research and treatment that will afford greater opportunities for a patient's personalized cancer treatment. This was first envisioned in the 1987 initial edition of this textbook and is now a "new" and popular approach to cancer treatment. Some forms of cancer biotherapy use the strategy of tumor stabilization and control through continued biological therapy, akin to the use of insulin in the treatment of diabetes. This textbook illustrates new methods of thinking and new strategies for control of cancer. It is always difficult to move from past dogma to future opportunity, but this fifth edition of Principles of Cancer Biotherapy illustrates why it is so important to the patients for researchers and clinicians to explore and quickly apply these new opportunities in cancer biotherapy.

This book discusses the common principles of morality and ethics derived from divinely endowed intuitive reason through the creation of al-fitr' a (nature) and human intellect (al-‘aql). Biomedical topics are presented and ethical issues related to topics such as genetic testing, assisted reproduction and organ transplantation are discussed. Whereas these natural sources are God’s special gifts to human beings, God’s revelation as given to the prophets is the supernatural source of divine guidance through which human communities have been guided at all times through history. The second part of the book concentrates on the objectives of Islamic religious practice – the maqa' sid – which include: Preservation of Faith, Preservation of Life, Preservation of Mind (intellect and reason), Preservation of Progeny (al-nasl) and Preservation of Property. Lastly, the third part of the book discusses selected topical issues, including abortion, assisted reproduction devices, genetics, organ transplantation, brain death and end-of-life aspects. For each topic, the current medical evidence is followed by a detailed discussion of the ethical issues involved.

Biobank research and genomic information are changing the way we look at health and medicine. Genomics challenges our values and has always been controversial and difficult to regulate. In the future lies the promise of tailored medical treatments and pharmacogenomics but the borders between medical research and clinical practice are becoming blurred. We see sequencing platforms for research that can have diagnostic value for patients. Clinical applications and research have been kept separate, but the blurring lines challenges existing regulations and ethical frameworks. Then how do we regulate it? This book contains an overview of the existing regulatory landscape for biobank research in the Western world and some critical chapters to show how regulations and ethical frameworks are developed and work. How should international sharing work? How design an ethical informed consent? An underlying critique: the regulatory systems are becoming increasingly complex and opaque. The international community is building systems that should respond to that. According to the authors in fact, it is time to turn the ship around. Biobank researchers have a moral responsibility to look at and assess their work in relation to the bigger picture: the shared norms and values of current society. Research ethics shouldn’t only be a matter of bioethicists writing guidelines that professionals have to follow. Ethics should be practiced through discourse and regulatory frameworks need to be part of that public discourse. Ethics review should be then not merely application of bureaucracy and a burden for researchers but an arena where researchers discuss their projects, receive advice and practice their ethics skills.

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.

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.

The UNESCO International Bioethics Committee is an international body that sets standards in the field of bioethics. This collection represents the contributions of the IBC to global bioethics. The IBC is a body of 36 independent experts that follows progress in the life sciences and its applications in order to ensure respect for human dignity and freedom. Currently, some of the topics of the IBC contributions have been discussed in the bioethics literature, mostly journal articles. However, this is a unique contribution by the scholars who developed these universal declarations and reports. The contributors have not only provided a scholarly up to date discussion of their research topics, but as members of the IBC they have also discussed specific practical challenges in the development of such international documents. This book will be suited to academics within bioethics, health care policy and international law.

This book offers the policy-maker or decision-maker key insights and practical information regarding the features of ethics frameworks best suited to the ethical assessment of human cognitive enhancement (HCE) applications, such as pharmaceutical cognitive enhancers and noninvasive brain stimulation techniques. This book takes as its departure point the entrenched philosophical debate between opponents and proponents of HCE and the increased feasibility of some applications of HCE. Recent calls for policy-making in the area of human enhancement reflect the need to find a balance between addressing current ethical issues and issues that are more speculative in nature or are underpinned by abstract philosophical concepts. Practical ethical approaches for policy or decision-making should enable the development of an evidence base for the risks and benefits of HCE applications. Moreover, such practical approaches should also incorporate a broader range of value bases that would facilitate convergence regarding certain decisions and judgements. This book identifies and evaluate tools that help us to go beyond polarised philosophical debates in order to assist practical decision makers in concrete ethical deliberation and decision-making. The focus is on systematic methods with which to identify relevant ethical values and assess the impacts of an HCE application on those values in order to facilitate decision-making regarding the ethical acceptability or desirability of the application.

This book is a comprehensive, empirically-grounded exploration of the relationship between bioethics, culture, and the perspective of being affected. It provides a new outlook on how complex "bioethical" issues become questions of everyday life. The authors focus on two contexts, genetic testing and end-of-life care, to locate and demonstrate emerging themes of responsibility, such as self-responsibility, responsibility for kin, and the responsibility of society. Within these themes, the duty to know versus the right not to know one's genetic fate (in the context of genetic testing), or the sanctity of life versus self-determination (in the context of end of life care) are identified as culturally embedded dilemmas that are very much relevant for lay persons. Furthermore, cultural factors such as religion, history, utopian and dystopian views of biomedical technologies, outlooks on the body and on health/illness, and citizenship are examined. Health issues are increasingly becoming a question of assessing risk and responsibility: How can we better prepare ourselves for the future? We all make such assessments in a way that combines personal inclinations, professional recommendations, and cultural framings. There is still much to be learned about the interplay between these three dimensions.

Science is built on trust. The assumption is that scientists will conduct their work with integrity, honesty, and a strict adherence to scientific protocols. Written by geoscientists for geoscientists, Scientific Integrity and Ethics in the Geosciences acquaints readers with the fundamental principles of scientific ethics and shows how they apply to everyday work in the classroom, laboratory, and field. Resources are provided throughout to help discuss and implement principles of scientific integrity and ethics. Volume highlights include: Examples of international and national codes and policies Exploration of the role of professional societies in scientific integrity and ethics References to scientific integrity and ethics in publications and research data Discussion of science integrity, ethics, and geoethics in education Extensive coverage of data applications Scientific Integrity and Ethics in the Geosciences is a valuable resource for students, faculty, instructors, and scientists in the geosciences and beyond. It is also useful for geoscientists working in industry, government, and policymaking. Read an interview with the editors to find out more: https: //eos.org/editors-vox/ethics-crucial-for-the-future-of-the-geosciences

With the advance of biomedicine, certain individuals and groups are vulnerable because of their incapacities to defend themselves. The International Bioethics Committee as a UNESCO working group has for the last several years dedicated to deepen this principle of human vulnerability and personal integrity. This book serves to supplement this effort with a religious perspective given a great number of the world’s population is affiliated with some religious traditions. While there is diversity within each of these traditions, all of them carry in them the mission to protect the weak, the underprivileged, and the poor. Thus, here presented is a collection of papers written by bioethics experts from six major world religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism—who were gathered to discuss the meaning and implications of the principle of vulnerability in their respective traditions.        

Sport is often thought of as simply "games," but it can in fact be much more. Sport can be responsible for guiding social justice movements, igniting city-wide riots, uniting countries, permanently injuring youth, revolutionizing views about race, gender and class, and producing several of the most successful global industries. Reports of ethical crises in athletics are constant fodder for popular attention, whether performance enhancing drugs in baseball, corruption in college athletics, the epidemic of brain damage among NFL players, and others too numerous to mention. As a proxy for social concerns, we naturally think of sport in inherently moral terms. Yet we can hardly define the term "sport," or agree on acceptable levels of sporting risk, or determine clear roles and responsibilities for fans, players, coaches, owners, media and health care personnel. Bringing together 27 of the most essential recent articles from philosophy, history, sociology, medicine, and law, this collection explores intersections of sports and ethics and brings attention to the immense role of sports in shaping and reflecting social values.

Nanobiotechnology is a fast developing field of research and application in many domains such as in medicine, pharmacy, cosmetics and agro-industry. The book addresses the lastest fundamental results on nanotoxicology and nanoethics, and the enormous range of potential applications in the fields of medical diagnostics, nanomedicine, and food and water administration. Nanoscale objects have properties leading to specific kinds of behaviour, sometimes exacerbating their chemical reactivity, physical behaviour, or potential to penetrate deeply within living organisms. Hence it is important to ensure the responsible and safe development of nanomaterials and nanotechnologies. This fourth volume in the Nanoscience series should make its mark, by presenting the state of the art in the fields of nanotoxicology and nanoethics. This is the first book to combine both scientific knowledge and ethical and social recommendations. It also presents specific policies on nanotechnologies set up by national and international authorities. This book is of interest to engineers, researchers, and graduate students.

Many subscribe to an Ethic of Life, an ethical perspective on which all living things deserve some level of moral concern. Within philosophy, the Ethic of Life has been clarified, developed, and rigorously defended; yet it has also found its harshest critics. Between biocentrists, those that endorse the Ethic of Life, and those that accept a more restricted view of moral status, the debate has reached a standstill, with few new resources for shifting or complicating it. In The Death of the Ethic of Life, John Basl seeks to end this comfortable stalemate by emphasizing a simple truth: the well-being of non-sentient beings, such as plants, species, and ecosystems, is morally significant only to the extent that it matters to sentient beings. Basl first develops a version of The Ethic of Life that best meets traditional challenges: the Ethic, if it is to survive criticism, must be able to explain how it is that all living things have a welfare or a good of their own. The best hope of offering such an explanation is to ground that welfare in teleology or goal-directedness, and then to ground that goal-directedness in the workings of natural selection. While a naturalistic account of teleology is crucial to defending an Ethic of Life, it is also its downfall. This Ethic ultimately entails that not only are ecosystems and collectives morally considerable, but so, too, are artifacts: everything from can openers to computers. Basl shows that evaluation of the resources for distinguishing artifacts from organisms forces us to abandon, for good, the Ethic of Life. The Death of the Ethic of Life provides not only a new answer to a fundamental question in environmental ethics, but a new way to conceive of fundamental concepts and issues in debates over who or what matters from the moral point of view, with wide-ranging implications in the philosophy of technology and bioethics.

Behavioral neuroscience encompasses the disciplines of neurobiology and psychology to study mechanisms of behavior. This volume provides a contemporary overview of the current state of how ethics informs behavioral neuroscience research. There is dual emphasis on ethical challenges in experimental animal approaches and in clinical and nonclinical research involving human participants.

Since the therapeutic value of umbilical cord blood (UCB) stem cells was first recognised in the late 1980s, there has been a proliferation of both public and private UCB banks worldwide. However, the ability to utilise such a potentially valuable resource has provoked a number of controversies. In a distinctly accessible style, this book unpacks the socio-legal implications of the UCB collection process and constructs a detailed analysis of the law and ethics that surrounds UCB banking in the UK, including ownership of the cells. Its enquiry is located within the theoretical framework of altruism versus self-interest and explores the notions of risk and choice associated with this distinctive blend of public/private healthcare provision. The book evaluates the impact of the Human Tissue Act 2004 and the European Union Tissues and Cells Directive (2004/23/EC) on the UCB industry and provides a unique insight into the effect that the law may have on the NHS whose maternity staff and premises are used to collect UCB. This book would be of interest primarily to a UK readership in addition to expectant families, health professionals, students, academics, practitioners and the UCB industry elsewhere in the world.

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive yet concise overview of the challenges and opportunities presented by the use of big data in healthcare. The respective chapters address a range of aspects: from health management to patient safety; from the human factor perspective to ethical and economic considerations, and many more. By providing a historical background on the use of big data, and critically analyzing current approaches together with issues and challenges related to their applications, the book not only sheds light on the problems entailed by big data, but also paves the way for possible solutions and future research directions. Accordingly, it offers an insightful reference guide for health information technology professionals, healthcare managers, healthcare practitioners, and patients alike, aiding them in their decision-making processes; and for students and researchers whose work involves data science-related research issues in healthcare.

Bioethics is the study of ethical issues arising out of advances in the life sciences and medicine. Historically, bioethics has been associated with issues in research ethics and clinical ethics as a result of research scandals such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and public debates about the definition of death, medical paternalism, health care rationing, and abortion. As biomedical technologies have advanced, challenging new questions have arisen for bioethics and new sub-disciplines such as neuroethics and public health ethics have entered the scene. This volume features ten original essays on five cutting-edge controversies in bioethics written by leading philosophers. I. Research Ethics: How Should We Justify Ancillary Care Duties? II. Clinical Ethics: Are Psychopaths Morally Accountable? III. Reproductive Ethics: Is There A Solution to the Non-Identity Problem? IV. Neuroethics: What is Addiction and Does It Excuse? V. Public Health Ethics: Is Luck Egalitarianism Implausibly Harsh? S. Matthew Liao and Collin O'Neil's concise introduction to the essays in the volume, the annotated bibliographies and study questions for each controversy, and the supplemental guide to additional current controversies in bioethics give the reader a broad grasp of the different kinds of challenges in bioethics.