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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Life sciences: general issues > Bio-ethics
* Should abnormal fetuses be carried to term just to be used for infant transplant organs? * Should physicians sell the drugs they prescribe? * Should human death be deemed to occur when one permanently loses consciousness? These questions-burning issues in today's already hot bioethical climate-are the focus of this seventh volume in Humber and Almeder's renowned Biomedical Ethics Reviews series. Interdisciplinary in approach, Biomedical Ethics Reviews * 1989 offers insightful, penetrating chapters contributed by leading experts in forefront areas of ethics and medicine. Each topic is briefly summarized in an introductory chapter, followed by a more focused, in-depth analysis of the specific issue, as well as a review of the recent literature. And to ensure that these articles are as accessible and useful to as many readers as possible-whether professional or informed layperson-the authors have made every effort to minimize the use of technical jargon. Biomedical Ethics Reviews * 1989 is not only a valuable reference, but also constitutes a real eye-opener for everyone concerned with bioethics today
Biomedical Ethics Reviews: 1992 is the tenth volume in a series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. Two topics are discussed in the present volume: (1) Bioethics and the Military, and (2) Compulsory Birth Control. Each topic constitutes a separate section in our text; introductory essays briefly summarize the contents of each section. Bioethics is, by its nature, interdisciplinary in character. Recog nizing this fact, the authors represented in the present volume have made every effort to minimize the use of technical jargon. At the same time, we believe the purpose of providing a review of the recent literature, as well as of advancing bioethical discussion, is well served by the pieces collected herein. We look forward to the next volume in our series, and very much hope the reader will also. James M. Humber Robert F. Almeder vii Contributors Paul Christopher * Department of English and Philosophy Division, US Military Academy, West Point, New York Gerard Elfstrom * Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama Nicholas Fotion * Department of Philosophy, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia Martin Gunderson * Department of Philosophy, Macalester College, St.
This textbook provides a brief history of human experimentation and reviews various theories of ethics from which the principles and rules that govern this research are derived. All relevant international documents and national regulations, policies and memoranda are referred to extensively to assist in addressing issues that regularly arise during the course of research involving human subjects. It includes case examples and exercises and is of interest to students and experienced researchers.
This is the second volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews, a series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. Five topics are dis cussed in the present volume. Section I, Public Policy andRe search with Human Subjects, reviews the history of the moral issues involved in the history of research with human subjects, and confronts most of the major legal and moral problems involving research on human subjects. Questions addressed in this section range from those concerning informed and proxy consent to those dealing with the adequacy of monitoring hu man research via institutional review boards (IRBs). Section II deals with a second broad topic in bioethics, The Right to Health Care in a Democratic Society. Here the concern not merely that of determining whether there is a right to is health care, but also, if there is such a right, how it ought best be understood and implemented. To answer questions such as these, we learn that one must distinguish legal from moral rights, assess the merits of various theories of rights, clarify the relationship between rights and duties, and attempt to deter mine a just method for the distribution of health care. Advances in medical technology often pose new legal and moral problems for legislators and health care practitioners."
In the past decade the body of literature in the area of biomedical ethics has expanded at an astounding rate. Indeed, on every major topic, the literature in this area has mUltiplied, and continues to do so, so rapidly that one can easily fall behind important advances in our thinking about and understanding of the problems of contemporary bioethics. Awareness of this need to keep apace of developments in the area prompted a recent reviewer of our earlier collection Biomedical Ethics and the Law (Plenum, 2nd edition, 1979) to suggest that somebody ought to offer the service of providing a biennial review or update of the literature on the various central topics in bioethics. Thomas Lanigan, of The Humana Press, agreed with this last sug gestion and so asked us to edit a series of texts consisting of previously unpublished essays on selected topics, a series that would seek to re view and update recent literature on the central topics, while also striv ing to advance distinctive solutions to the problems on the topics under discussion. Accordingly, this first collection of previously unpublished essays focuses on the selected topics, and the authors commissioned were charged with addressing the basic problems assigned while also bringing the reader either directly or indirectly up to date on the rele vant literature."
Biomedical Ethics Reviews * 1987 is the fifth volume in a series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. Three topics are discussed in the present volume: (1) Prescribing Drugs for the Aged and Dying; (2) Animals as a Source of Human Transplant Organs, and (3) The Nurse's Role: Rights and Responsibilities. Each topic constitutes a separate sec tion in our text; introductory essays briefly summarize the contents of each section. Bioethics is, by its nature, interdisciplinary in character. Recognizing this fact, the authors represented in the present volume have made every effort to minimize the use of techni cal jargon. At the same time, we believe the purpose of pro viding a review of the recent literature, as well as of advancing bioethical discussion, is admirably served by the pieces col lected herein. We look forward to the next volume in our series, and very much hope the reader will also.
Biomedical Ethics Reviews: 1985 is the third volume in a series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central impor tance in bioethics today. Four topics are discussed in the present volume: ( 1) Should citizens of the United States be permitted to buy, sell, and broker human organs? (2) Should sex preselection be legally proscribed? (3) What decision-making procedure should medical per sonnel employ in those cases where there is a high degree of uncer tainty? (4) What do we mean when we use the terms "health" and "disease"? Each topic constitutes a separate section in our text; intro ductory essays briefly summarize the contents of each section. Bioethics is, by its nature, interdisciplinary in character. Recognizing this fact, the authors represented in the present volume have made every effort to minimize the use of technical jargon. At the same time, we believe the purpose of providing a review of the recent literature, as well as of advancing bioethical discussion, is admirably served by the pieces collected herein. We look forward to the next volume in our series, and very much hope the reader will also."
Narratives and Jewish Bioethics searches for answers to the critical question of what roles ancient narratives play in creating modern norms by Jewish bioethicists utilizing the Jewish textual tradition.
The National Science Foundation, The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and the Center for Technology and Humanities at Georgia State University sponsored a two-day national conference on Moral Issues and Public Policy Issues in the Use of the Method of Quantitative Risk Assessment ( QRA) on September 26 and 27, 1985, in Atlanta, Georgia. The purpose of the conference was to promote discussion among practicing risk assessors, senior government health officials extensively involved in the practice of QRA, and moral philosophers familiar with the method. The conference was motivated by the disturbing fact that distinguished scientists ostensibly employing the same method of quantitative risk assessment to the same substances conclude to widely varying and mutually exclusive assessments of safety, depending on which of the various assumptions they employ when using the method. In short, the conference was motivated by widespread concern over the fact that QRA often yields results that are quite controversial and frequently contested by some who, in professedly using the same method, manage to arrive at significantly different estimates of risk.
This volume developed from and around a series of six lectures sponsored by Rice University and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in the Fall of 1976. Though these lectures on the concepts of mental health, mental illness and personal responsibility, and the social treatment of the mentally ill were given to general audiences in Houston and Galveston, they were revised and expanded to produce six extensive formal essays by Dan Brock, Jules Coleman, Joseph Margolis, Michael Moore, Jerome Neu, and Rolf Sartorius. The five remaining contributions by Daniel Creson, Corinna Delkeskamp, Edmund Erde, James Speer, and Stephen Wear were in various ways engendered by the debates occasioned by the original six lectures. In fact, the majority of the last five contributions emerged from informal dis. cussions occasioned by the original lecture series. The result is an interlocking set of essays that address the law and public policy insofar as they bear on the treatment of the mentally ill, special atten. tion being given to the defmition of mental illness, generally and in the law, to the issues of the bearing of mental incompetence in cases of criminal and civil liability, and to the issue of involuntary commitment for the purpose of treatment or for institutional care. There is as well a critical defense of Thomas Szasz's radical proposal that mental illnesses are best understood as problems in living, not as diseases."
Medical or health-oriented screening programs are amongst the most debated aspects of health care and public health practices in health care and public health ethics, as well as health policy discussions. In spite of this, most treatments of screening in the research literature restrict themselves to isolated scientific aspects, sometimes complemented by economic analyses or loose speculations regarding policy aspects. At the same time, recent advances in medical genetics and technology, as well as a rapidly growing societal focus on public health concerns, inspires an increase in suggested or recently started screening programs. This book involves an in-depth analysis of the ethical, political and philosophical issues related to health-oriented screening programs.It explores the considerations that arise when heath care interacts with other societal institutions on a large scale, as is the case with screening: What values may be promoted or compromised by screening programs? What conflicts of values do typically arise - both internally and in relation to the goals of health care, on the one hand, and the goals of public health and the general society, on the other? What aspects of screening are relevant for determining whether it should be undertaken or not and how it should be organised in order to remain defensible? What implications does the ethics of screening have for health care ethics as a whole? These questions are addressedby applying philosophical methods of conceptual analysis, as well as models and theories from moral and political philosophy, medical ethics, and public health ethics, to alarge number of ongoing and proposed screening programs whichmakes this book the first comprehensive work on the ethics of screening. Analyses and suggestions are made that are of potential interest to health care staff, medical researchers, policy makers and the general public."
Biomedical Ethics Reviews is an annual publication designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. Ordinarily, more than one topic is discussed in each volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews. This year, however, we have decided to devote the entire volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews: 1988 to disussion of one topic, namely, AIDS. The ra tionale for this decision should be clear: AIDS is arguably the most serious public health threat facing our nation today, and the char acter of the disease is such that it creates special problems for ethicists, philosophers, theologians, educators, jurists, health care professionals, and politicians. Indeed, the questions that AIDS gives rise to are so numerous and complex that no one text could hope to treat them exhaustively. Still, if it is impossible, in anyone text, to deal with all of the perplexing difficulties that AIDS generates, it nevertheless remains true that each addition to the AIDS literature contributes to our collective knowledge, and in so doing, brings us one step closer to resolving at least some of the problems associated with the disease. We believe that the articles included in the present volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews serve this purpose admirably, and we hope the reader will agree. James M. Humber Robert F. Almeder vii Contributors Ronald Carson * Medical Humanities Institute, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas David J.
"The fixed person for fixed duties, who in older societies was such a godsend, in the future ill be a public danger." Twenty years ago, a single legal metaphor accurately captured the role that American society accorded to physicians. The physician was "c- tain of the ship." Physicians were in charge of the clinic, the Operating room, and the health care team, responsible - and held accountabl- for all that happened within the scope of their supervision. This grant of responsibility carried with it a corresponding grant of authority; like the ship's captain, the physician was answerable to no one regarding the practice of his art. However compelling the metaphor, few would disagree that the mandate accorded to the medical profession by society is changing. As a result of pressures from a number of diverse directions - including technological advances, the development of new health professionals, changes in health care financing and delivery, the recent emphasis on consumer choice and patients' rights - what our society expects phy- cians to do and to be is different now. The purpose of this volume is to examine and evaluate the conceptual foundations and the moral imp- cations of that difference. Each of the twelve essays of this volume assesses the current and future validity of the "captain of the ship" metaphor from a different perspective. The essays are grouped into four sections. In Section I, Russell Maulitz explores the physician's role historically.
George Annas, America's leading proponent of patient rights, spells them out for you in this revised, up-to-date edition of his groundbreaking classic. Thorough, comprehensive, and easy to follow-using a question-and-answer format in much of the text-The Rights of Patients explores all aspects of becoming an informed patient: * hospital organization * hospital rules * emergency treatment * admission and discharge * the patient rights movement * informed consent * surgery * obstetrical care * human experimentation and research * privacy and confidentiality * care of the dying * death, autopsy, and organ donation * medical malpractice.
Human existence is marked by pain, limitation, disability, disease, suffering, and death. These facts of life and of death give ample grounds for characterizing much of the human condition as unfortunate. A core philosophical question is whether the circumstances are in addition unfair or unjust in the sense of justifying claims on the resources, time, and abilities of others. The temptation to use the languages of rights and of justice is und- standable. Faced with pain, disability, and death, it seems natural to complain that "someone should do something," "this is unfair," or "it just isn't fight that people should suffer this way." Yet it is one thing to complain about the unfairness of another's actions, and another thing to complain about the unfairness of biological or physical processes. If no one is to blame for one's illness, disability, or death, in what sense are one's unfortunate circumstances unfair or unjust? How can claims against others for aid and support arise if no one has caused the unfortunate state of affairs? To justify the languages of fights to health care or justice in health care requires showing why particular unfortunate circumstances are also unfair, in the sense of demanding the labors of others. It requires understanding as well the limits of property claims. After all, claims regarding justice in health care or about fights to health care limit the property fights of those whose resources will be used to provide care.
As the field of bioethics has matured, increasing attention is being paid to how bioethical issues are treated in different moral and religious traditions and in different parts of the world. It is often difficult, however, to get accurate information about these matters. The Bioethics Yearbook Series provides interested parties with analyses of how such issues as new reproductive techniques, abortion, maternal-fetal conflicts, care of seriously ill newborns, consent, confidentiality, equitable access, cost-containment, withdrawing treatment, active euthanasia, the definition of death, and organ transplantation are being discussed in these different traditions and different parts of the world. The first volume, and every second succeeding volume, will discuss developments in the Anglican, Baptist, Buddhist, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu, Jewish, LDS, Lutheran, Methodist, Muslim, and Presbyterian Traditions. The second volume, and every second volume succeeding it, will discuss official governmental and medical society policies on these topics throughout the world.
The subject of medical ethics is always current and offers an inviting theme, particularly for anyone who has spent his life in medical practice. But the subject of ethics is impossible to deal with unless one first asks its purposes. Therefore, this book is divided into two parts, the first comprehends theoretical considerations and the second, pragmatic and empirical data on, and discussions of, current problems. Part One will be of greater interest to moral philosophers, philosophers and historians of science, and social scientists. Part Two should have greater appeal to physicians, medical students and medical planners. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the latter will look into Part One for the justification of the conclusions the author could reach on the material presented in Part Two. Likewise, it will become obvious why it is believed the solutions of many, if not most, ethical dilemmas are not always discernible at a given moment in time. Also, those who are more concerned with the theoretical material of Part One might find its application to current real-life problems interesting. It should not be too much to hope that the entire book will appeal to many general readers. The bio-ethical problems presented are of frequent and growing personal concern, and are discussed almost daily in the news media.
In the past few years, an increasing number of colleges and universities have added courses in biomedical ethics to their curricula. To some extent, these additions serve to satisfy student demands for "relevance. " But it is also true that such changes reflect a deepening desire on the part of the academic community to deal effectively with a host of problems which must be solved if we are to have a health-care delivery system which is efficient, humane, and just. To a large degree, these problems are the unique result of both rapidly changing moral values and dramatic advances in biomedical technology. The past decade has witnessed sudden and conspicuous controversy over the morality and legality of new practices relating to abortion, therapy for the mentally ill, experimentation using human subjects, forms of genetic interven tion, and euthanasia. Malpractice suits abound, and astronomical fees for malpractice insurance threaten the very possibility of medical and health-care practice. Without the backing of a clear moral consensus, the law is frequently forced into resolving these conflicts only to see the moral issues involved still hotly debated and the validity of the existing law further questioned. Take abortion, for example. Rather than settling the legal issue, the Supreme Court's original abortion decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), seems only to have spurred further legal debate. And of course, whether or not abortion is a mo rally ac ceptable procedure is still the subject of heated dispute."
In April 1982, an infant boy was born in Bloomington, Indiana, with Down syndrome and a defective, but surgically correctable, esophagus. His parents refused to consent to surgery or intravenous feeding. The hospital unsuccessfully sought a court order to force treatment, and appeals to higher courts also failed. The child, identified as Baby Doe by the news media, subsequently died. The events in Bloomington became the catalyst for action by the Reagan administration, the courts, and Congress that culminated in a federal policy that makes failure to treat newborns with disabilities a form of child neglect. This book centers on the public policy aspects of withholding treatment from critically ill newborns who are disabled. Specifically, it deals with why the policy was enacted and what impact it has had on health care workers, families, and infants. Some of the contributors to this book spearheaded the early debate on withholding treatment. Anthony Shaw's New York Times Magazine article in 1972 was the first to address these issues in the popular press. The following year, he published a related article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Also appearing in this same issue of NEJM, was the pathbreaking study, coauthored by A. G. M. Campbell, on withholding treatment in the special care nursery at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Each of these articles promoted much public and professional discussion.
Today's news is full of stories about suicide machines, critical
life-and-death decisions, who owns a person's life, death with
dignity, prolonging painful life, and euthanasia as a justifiable
release for terminally ill patients. And this year, California
voters will be faced with a real life-and-death decision: the
Euthanasia Initiative. Other states are expected to follow suit
soon.
Two ofthe most important notions concerning the rights of people with mental illness are among the most neglected: the first is that human rights and duties are complementary and that both must be considered in constructing a framework for mental health care. The second is that we must strive for equity and not only for equality in developing mental health programs. The first ofthese notions is complex. It refers to the duties ofpeople with mental illness and to the duties ofthose who surround them. Mental illness does not liberate the person who has it from civic obligations. The most basic ofthese is to give support to others and to refuse to harm them Their carers, society and the patient's self-respect all gain through their recognition, even though the fulfilment of these obligations might be difficult or impossible in certain periods ofillness. The duty of those surrounding the patients is to recognise and respect their existence and to make the necessary arrangements to respond to their needs, protect their rights and compensate for their temporary or permanent inability to fulfil their civic duties. A society's social capital is the public good that results from the mutual supportofmembers ofa society: iffor one reason or another, some or all members ofa society fail to offer such support the social capital will diminish and the society will cease to be civic.
The Yearbook series alternates between a biennial volume tracing recent theological discussions on topics in bioethics and a biennial volume tracing recent regional discussions in bioethics. Volume 4 provides a comprehensive single-volume summary of recent international and regional developments on specific topics in bioethics. To give uniformity to the discussions all authors were asked to report on the following topics: new reproductive technologies, abortion, maternal-fetal conflicts, case of severely disabled newborns, consent of treatment and experimentation, confidentiality, equitable access to health care, ethical concerns raised by cost-containment measures, decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment, active euthanasia, the definition of death, organ donation and transplantation, and a final broad category of other issues. The internationally respected contributors report on the following 16 areas: the United States, Canada, Latin America, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany/Austria/Switzerland, Spain/Portugal/Italy, Scandinavia, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Australia/New Zealand. The commentators draw on three sets of resources: Statutes, legislative proposals, and regulatory changes that directly influence or have implications for, areas of bioethical concern; Case law and court judgments that shape, either decisively or suggestively, recent legal interpretations of particular issues of areas in bioethics; Formal statements of governmentally appointed commissions, advisory bodies, and representative professional groups, as well as less formal statements and recommendations of other organisations. In addition to providing timely summaries of recent developments, the volume offers rich and useful bibliographical references to a wide array of documents, many of which would be difficult for readers to learn about, given the lack of centralized international collection of such documents. The Yearbook will be widely consulted by all bioethicists, public policy analysts, lawyers and theologians.
Ethics in Psychiatry: (1) presents a comprehensive review of ethical issues arising in psychiatric care and research; (2) relates ethical issues to changes and challenges of society; (3) examines the application of general ethics to specific psychiatric problems and relates these to moral implications of psychiatry practice; (4) deals with recently arising ethical problems; (5) contains contributions of leading European ethicists, philosophers, lawyers, historians and psychiatrists; (6) provides a basis for the exploration of culture-bound influences on morals, manners and customs in the light of ethical principles of global validity.
This book shows how pressing issues in bioethics - e.g. the ownership of biological material and human cognitive enhancement - successfully can be discussed with in a virtue ethics framework. This is not intended as a complete or exegetic account of virtue ethics. Rather, the aim here is to discuss how some key ideas in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, when interpreted pragmatically, can be a productive way to approach some hot issues in bioethics. In spite of being a very promising theoretical perspective virtue ethics has so far been underdeveloped both in bioethics and neuroethics and most discussions have been conducted in consequentialist and/or deontological terms. "
As the field of bioethics has matured, increasing attention is being paid to how bioethical issues are treated in different moral and religious traditions and in different regions of the world. It is often difficult, however, to obtain accurate information about these matters. The Bioethics Yearbook series provides interested parties with analyses of how such issues as new reproductive techniques, abortion, maternal-fetal conflicts, care of seriously ill newborns, consent, confidentiality, equitable access, cost-containment, withholding and withdrawing treatment, active euthanasia, the definition of death, and organ transplantation are being discussed in different religious traditions and regions. Volume Three discusses theological developments from 1990--1992 in Anglican, Baptist, Buddhist, Catholic, Continental Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu, Jewish, Latter-Day Saint, Lutheran, Methodist, Muslim, and Presbyterian traditions. Volume Four will continue coverage of official governmental and medical society policies on these topics throughout the world. |
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