As the demand for organs continues to outstrip availability and waiting lists surge, the pressure to make morally questionable, unethical decisions becomes more likely and trust in transplant medicine starts to erode. Medical ethics expert and former health professional, Trevor Stammers, analyses the complex ethical web that constitutes the worldwide exchange of organs and tissues. Key philosophical questions concerning existence, consciousness, the nature of death and the right to life connect organ donation and transplantation to real-life case studies exploring difficulties with the 'dead donor rule' for deceased donation, organ donation euthanasia, xenotransplantation and the creation of organoids and 'organs-on-chips', alongside examples of human trafficking and systematic state murder to provide organs. Controversial cases from Japan, Germany, USA and Singapore are examined alongside the Spanish, Welsh, and Chilean experience of deceased donation opt-out schemes to highlight the variety of threats and challenges to public trust in transplant medicine. Charting these examples provides valuable material for debates and discussions in the philosophy of medicine and medical ethics more generally. Stammers suggests viable alternatives to current ethical failings by focusing on the moral arguments that define public trust, moving the debate on transplant ethics in vital new directions.

The questions and dilemmas of bioethics touch everyone. Should people who refuse to be vaccinated be treated for COVID-19, even if that displaces vaccinated patients with other serious conditions? What restrictions on abortion should there be, if any? Should women be paid to donate eggs? Bioethics: What Everyone Needs to Know (R) discusses these and other similar questions facing the public today-as well as providing a way for thinking deeply about them. Steinbock and Menzel first examine major moral theories and how they can be used to analyze bioethical issues. They then provide historical background to the birth of bioethics and explain how it shifted from a paternalistic doctor knows best approach to respect for autonomy, a fundamental value in contemporary bioethics. Subsequent chapters cover advance directives, experimentation on human subjects, the definition of death, physician-assisted dying, abortion, disability, just healthcare systems, the allocation of scarce resources, pharmaceutical drug pricing, assisted reproductive technology, egg donation, surrogate motherhood, sex selection, and the genetic modification of humans. Race and gender are considered throughout, as are the ethical issues raised by pandemics. Steinbock and Menzel consider the controversial questions that surface in the public sphere, explaining the facts, and then evaluating different approaches to resolving them.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Personal autonomy is often lauded as a key value in contemporary Western bioethics. Though the claim that there is an important relationship between autonomy and rationality is often treated as uncontroversial in this sphere, there is also considerable disagreement about how we should cash out the relationship. In particular, it is unclear whether a rationalist view of autonomy can be compatible with legal judgments that enshrine a patient's right to refuse medical treatment, regardless of whether the reasons underpinning the choice are known and rational, or indeed whether they even exist. Jonathan Pugh brings recent philosophical work on the nature of rationality to bear on the question of how we should understand personal autonomy in contemporary bioethics. In doing so, he develops a new framework for thinking about the concept of autonomy, one that is grounded in an understanding of the different roles that rational beliefs and rational desires have to play in it. Pugh's account allows for a deeper understanding of d the relationship between our freedom to act and our capacity to decide autonomously. His rationalist perspective is contrasted with other prominent accounts of autonomy in bioethics, and the revisionary implications it has for practical questions in biomedicine are also outlined.

What is epidemiology? What are the causes of a new disease? How can pandemics be prevented? Epidemiology is the study of the changing patterns of disease and its main aim is to improve the health of populations. It's a vital field, central to the health of society, to the identification of causes of disease, and to their management and prevention. Epidemiology has had an impact on many areas of medicine; from discovering the relationship between tobacco smoking and lung cancer, to the origin and spread of new epidemics. However, it is often poorly understood, largely due to misrepresentations in the media. In this Very Short Introduction Rodolfo Saracci dispels some of the myths surrounding the study of epidemiology. He provides a general explanation of the principles behind clinical trials, and explains the nature of basic statistics concerning disease. He also looks at the ethical and political issues related to obtaining and using information concerning patients, and trials involving placebos. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

In his 2006 State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush asked the U.S. Congress to prohibit the "most egregious abuses of medical research," such as the "creation of animal--human hybrids." The president's message echoed that of a 2004 report by the President's Council on Bioethics, which recommended that hybrid human--animal embryos be banned by Congress.

Discussions of early interspecies research, in which cells or DNA are interchanged between humans and nonhumans at early stages of development, can often devolve into sweeping statements, colorful imagery, and confusing policy. Although today's policy advisory groups are becoming more informed, debate is still limited by the interchangeable use of terms such as chimeras and hybrids, a tendency to treat all forms of interspecies alike, the failure to distinguish between laboratory research and procreation, and not enough serious policy justification. Andrea Bonnicksen seeks to understand reasons behind support of and disdain for interspecies research in such areas as chimerism, hybridization, interspecies nuclear transfer, cross-species embryo transfer, and transgenics. She highlights two claims critics make against early interspecies studies: that the research will violate human dignity and that it can lead to procreation. Are these claims sufficient to justify restrictive policy?

Bonnicksen carefully illustrates the challenges of making policy for sensitive and often sensationalized research -- research that touches deep-seated values and that probes the boundary between human and nonhuman animals.

Human Embryos and Preimplantation Genetic Technologies: Ethical, Social, and Public Policy Aspects presents the first holistic analysis of PGD and PGS as it is practiced and regulated worldwide. In addition to scientific and technical aspects, the book provides perspectives on the ethical, legal, religious, policy and social implications of global assisted reproduction technologies, including in Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, and Australia. Chapters cover history, ethics, feminism, family dynamics, psychological and interpersonal factors, the current state of PGD and PGS in 20 different sovereign nations and religious communities, and provide an analysis of public policy concerns and future directions.

Elizabeth Anscombe is now recognised as one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. She left a large corpus of work, wide-ranging in content, always original and bold. Her monograph Intention, published in 1957, is a modern classic, and was described by Donald Davidson as "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle." Her writings in ethics have inspired countless discussions, and she has been credited with having changed the face of Anglophone moral philosophy by reviving and arguing for virtue ethics, now a major field. Since Anscombe's death in 2001, her philosophical work has received a steadily increasing level of attention worldwide. Anscombe is often difficult to read, and she has certainly been frequently misunderstood, but the sympathetic interest in her work which is now evident in so many quarters is making it possible for a true picture to begin to emerge of the range, depth, and power of her contribution to philosophy. The Oxford Handbook of Elizabeth Anscombe conveys something of that emerging picture of Anscombe's overall philosophy-showing the great fecundity of her ideas in essays that develop and expand on those ideas-and allows contributors to engage critically with Anscombe, not merely to expound what she said. The handbook opens with an introduction that addresses the question of the unity in diversity of Anscombe's philosophy, relating this to the twenty-two essays that follow. The handbook is divided into parts along broadly thematic lines, addressing: intention, ethical theory, human life, the first person, and Anscombe on other philosophers.

Research on human beings saves countless lives, but has at times harmed the participants. To what degree then should government regulate science, and how? The horrors of Nazi concentration camp experiments and the egregious Tuskegee syphilis study led the US government, in 1974, to establish Research Ethics Committees, known as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to oversee research on humans. The US now has over 4,000 IRBs, which examine yearly tens of billions of dollars of research - all studies on people involving diseases, from cancer to autism, and behavior. Yet ethical violations persist. At the same time, critics have increasingly attacked these committees for delaying or blocking important studies. Partly, science is changing, and the current system has not kept up. Since the regulations were first conceived 40 years ago, research has burgeoned 30-fold. Studies often now include not a single university, but multiple institutions, and 40 separate IRBs thus need to approve a single project. One committee might approve a study quickly, while others require major changes, altering the scientific design, and making the comparison of data between sites difficult. Crucial dilemmas thus emerge of whether the current system should be changed, and if so, how. Yet we must first understand the status quo to know how to improve it. Unfortunately, these committees operate behind closed doors, and have received relatively little in-depth investigation. Robert Klitzman thus interviewed 45 IRB leaders and members about how they make decisions. What he heard consistently surprised him. This book reveals what Klitzman learned, providing rare glimpses into the conflicts and complexities these individuals face, defining science, assessing possible future risks and benefits of studies, and deciding how much to trust researchers - illuminating, more broadly, how we view and interpret ethics in our lives today, and perceive and use power. These committees reflect many of the most vital tensions of our time - concerning science and human values, individual freedom, government control, and industry greed. Ultimately, as patients, scientists, or subjects, the decisions of these men and women affect us all.

The foundations of research ethics are riven with fault lines emanating from a fear that if research is too closely connected to weighty social purposes an imperative to advance the common good through research will justify abrogating the rights and welfare of study participants. The result is an impoverished conception of the nature of research, an incomplete focus on actors who bear important moral responsibilities, and a system of ethics and oversight highly attuned to the dangers of research but largely silent about threats of ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable medical practices and health systems. In For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics, Alex John London defends a conception of the common good that grounds a moral imperative with two requirements. The first is to promote research that generates the information necessary to enable key social institutions to effectively, efficiently, and equitably safeguard the basic interests of individuals. The second is to ensure that research is organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects its various contributors' moral claims to be treated as free and equal. Connecting research to the goals of a just social order grounds a framework for assessing and managing research risk that reconciles these requirements and justifies key oversight practices in non-paternalistic terms. Reconceiving research ethics as resolving coordination problems and providing credible assurance that these requirements are being met expands the issues and actors that fall within the purview of the field and provides the foundation for a more unified and coherent approach to domestic and international research. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Bioethics asks fundamental questions. "Who lives? Who dies? Who decides?" These questions are relevant to us all. Too often, the general public's sole encounter with these weighty questions is through sound bites fed to us by the media-where complex, difficult matters are typically presented in superficial and inaccurate terms. Here, renowned bioethicist Albert R. Jonsen equips readers with the tools and background to navigate the fascinating and complex landscape of bioethics. Bioethics Beyond the Headlines is a primer. You will not find convoluted philosophical arguments in this volume. Rather, you will find an engaging sampling of the key questions in bioethics, including euthanasia, assisted reproduction, cloning and stem cells, neuroscience, access to healthcare, and even research on animals and questions of environmental ethics-areas typically overlooked in general introductions to bioethics. But a "primer" is not merely a first book-it should also "prime" the interest of the reader, to prepare the mind for a more expansive venture into these issues. Bioethics Beyond the Headlines intends to do just that.

The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, 2005, marked a significant step towards the recognition of universal standards in the field of science and medicine. This book provides an overview of the ethical and legal developments which have occurred in the field of bioethics and human rights since then. The work critically analyzes the Declaration from an ethical and legal perspective, commenting on its implementation, and discussing the role of non-binding norms in international bioethics. The authors examine whether the Declaration has contributed to the understanding of universal or global bioethics, and to what degree states have implemented the principles in their domestic legislation. The volume explores the currency of the Declaration vis-a-vis the more recent developments in technology and medicine and looks ahead to envisage the major bioethical challenges of the next twenty years. In this context, the book offers a comprehensive ethical and legal study of the Declaration with an in-depth analysis of the meaning of the provisions, in order to clarify the extension of human rights in the field of medicine and the obligations incumbent upon UNESCO member States, with reference to their implementation practice.

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.

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.

Emerging medical technologies are changing our views on human nature and what it means to be alive, healthy, and leading a good life. Reproductive technologies, genetic diagnosis, organ transplantation, and psychopharmacological drugs all raise existential questions that need to be tackled by way of philosophical analysis. Yet questions regarding the meaning of life have been strangely absent from medical ethics so far. This book brings phenomenology, the main player in the continental tradition of philosophy, to bioethics, and it does so in a comprehensive and clear manner. Starting out by analysing illness as an embodied, contextualized, and narrated experience, the book addresses the role of empathy, dialogue, and interpretation in the encounter between health-care professional and patient. Medical science and emerging technologies are then brought to scrutiny as endeavours that bring enormous possibilities in relieving human suffering but also great risks in transforming our fundamental life views. How are we to understand and deal with attempts to change the predicaments of coming to life and the possibilities of becoming better than well or even, eventually, surviving death? This is the first book to bring the phenomenological tradition, including philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Hans Jonas, and Charles Taylor, to answer such burning questions.

Most people believe that parents have moral rights and responsibilities regarding their children. These rights and responsibilities undergird the nuclear family and are essential to the flourishing of its members. However, their basis and contents are hotly contested. Do a child's genetic parents have a right to parent her? The importance of genetic ties is affirmed by many people's gut responses, everyday talk, and many court decisions, but the moral justification for tying parenthood rights to genetics is unclear. Parents are routinely permitted to make far-reaching decisions about their children's medical care, education, religious practice, and even how to punish them. When can parental rights be limited by the interests of the child or society? Matters are no more settled when it comes to parental responsibilities. It is commonly thought that if a man conceives a child through voluntary sexual intercourse he acquires parental responsibilities, even if he took every precaution against conception. On the other hand, sperm donors are widelythough not universallythought to have no responsibilities towards their progeny. What is the basis for these disparate judgments? Parents are expected to do a lot for their children as they raise them. But there are surely limits. Sometimes parents have to balance the needs of multiple family members or just want to have time for themselves. What is the extent of their parental responsibilities? In The Moral Foundations of Parenthood, Joseph Millum provides a philosophical account of moral parenthood. He explains how parental rights and responsibilities are acquired, what those rights and responsibilities consist in, and how parents should go about making decisions on behalf of their children. In doing so, he provides a set of frameworks to help solve pressing ethical dilemmas relating to parents and children.

This volume explores the ethics of making or expanding families through adoption or technologically assisted reproduction. For many people, these methods are separate and distinct: they can choose either adoption or assisted reproduction. But for others, these options blend together. For example, in some jurisdictions, the path of assisted reproduction for same-sex couples is complicated by the need for the partner who is not genetically related to the resulting child to adopt this child if she wants to become the child's legal parent. The essays in this volume critically examine moral choices to pursue adoption, assisted reproduction, or both, and highlight the social norms that can distort decision-making. Among these norms are those that favour people having biologically related children ('bionormativity') or that privilege a traditional understanding of family as a heterosexual unit with one or more children where both parents are the genetic, biological, legal, and social parents of these children. As a whole, the book looks at how adoption and assisted reproduction are morally distinct from one another, but also emphasizes how the two are morally similar. Choosing one, the other, or both of these approaches to family-making can be complex in some respects, but ought to be simple in others, provided that one's main goal is to become a parent.

Transplantation is a medically successful and cost-effective way to treat people whose organs have failed-but not enough organs are available to meet demand. Ethics and the Acquisition of Organs is concerned with the major ethical problems raised by policies for acquiring organs. The main topics are the rights of the dead, the role of the family, opt in and opt out systems, the conscription of organs, living organ donation from adults and children, directed donation and priority for donors, and the sale of organs. In this ground-breaking work, T. M. Wilkinson uses concepts from moral and political theory such as autonomy, rights, posthumous interests, justice, and well-being, in a context informed by the clinical, legal, and policy aspects of transplantation. The result is a rigorous philosophical exploration of real problems and options. He argues that the ethics of acquiring organs for transplantation is not only of great intellectual interest, but also of practical importance. As such, this book will be of profit not only to students and academics who work in applied ethics and bioethics, but also to the lawyers, policy-makers, clinicians, and lobby groups interested in transplantation.

Embryonic stem cell research holds unique promise for developing therapies for currently incurable diseases and conditions, and for important biomedical research. However, the process through which embryonic stem cells are obtained involves the destruction of early human embryos. Katrien Devolder focuses on the tension between the popular view that an embryo should never be deliberately harmed or destroyed, and the view that embryonic stem cell research, because of its enormous promise, must go forward. She provides an in-depth ethical analysis of the major philosophical and political attempts to resolve this tension. One such attempt involves the development of a middle ground position, which accepts only types or aspects of embryonic stem cell research deemed compatible with the view that the embryo has a significant moral status. An example is the position that it can be permissible to derive stem cells from embryos left over from in vitro fertilisation but not from embryos created for research. Others have advocated a technical solution. Several techniques have been proposed for deriving embryonic stem cells, or their functional equivalents, without harming embryos. An example is the induced pluripotent stem cell technique. Through highlighting inconsistencies in the arguments for these positions, Devolder argues that the central tension in the embryonic stem cell debate remains unresolved. This conclusion has important implications for the stem cell debate, as well as for policies inspired by this debate.

Much recent thought on the ethics of new biomedical technologies, and work in ethics and political philosophy more generally, is committed to hidden and contestable views about the nature of biological reality. This selection of essays by Tim Lewens, a leading expert in the field, teases out these biological foundations of bioethical writing and subjects them to scrutiny. The topics covered include human enhancement, the risks of technical progress, the alleged moral threat of synthetic biology, the reality of human nature, the relevance of evolutionary psychology to social policy, the nature of the distinction between health and disease, and justice in healthcare decision-making.

Human Dignity in Bioethics brings together a collection of essays that rigorously examine the concept of human dignity from its metaphysical foundations to its polemical deployment in bioethical controversies. The volume falls into three parts, beginning with meta-level perspectives and moving to concrete applications. Part 1 analyzes human dignity through a worldview lens, exploring the source and meaning of human dignity from naturalist, postmodernist, Protestant, and Catholic vantages, respectively, letting each side explain and defend its own conception. Part 2 moves from metaphysical moorings to key areas of macro-level influence: international politics, American law, and biological science. These chapters examine the legitimacy of the concept of dignity in documents by international political bodies, the role of dignity in American jurisprudence, and the implications-and challenges-for dignity posed by Darwinism. Part 3 shifts from macro-level topics to concrete applications by examining the rhetoric of human dignity in specific controversies: embryonic stem cell research, abortion, human-animal chimeras, euthanasia and palliative care, psychotropic drugs, and assisted reproductive technologies. Each chapter analyzes the rhetorical use of 'human dignity' by opposing camps, assessing the utility of the concept and whether a different concept or approach can be a more productive means of framing or guiding the debate.

This volume explores the ethics of making or expanding families through adoption or technologically assisted reproduction. For many people, these methods are separate and distinct: they can choose either adoption or assisted reproduction. But for others, these options blend together. For example, in some jurisdictions, the path of assisted reproduction for same-sex couples is complicated by the need for the partner who is not genetically related to the resulting child to adopt this child if she wants to become the child's legal parent. The essays in this volume critically examine moral choices to pursue adoption, assisted reproduction, or both, and highlight the social norms that can distort decision-making. Among these norms are those that favour people having biologically related children ('bionormativity') or that privilege a traditional understanding of family as a heterosexual unit with one or more children where both parents are the genetic, biological, legal, and social parents of these children. As a whole, the book looks at how adoption and assisted reproduction are morally distinct from one another, but also emphasizes how the two are morally similar. Choosing one, the other, or both of these approaches to family-making can be complex in some respects, but ought to be simple in others, provided that one's main goal is to become a parent.

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributors of this book present conversations between leading scholars from Israel and Germany based on an empirical bioethical perspective, analyses about the reshaping of 'life' by biomedicine, and philosophical reflections on socio-cultural claims and epistemic horizons of responsibilities. Practices and discussions of reproductive medicine transform the concepts of responsibility and irresponsibility.

A pioneer in the theory of pluralistic casuistry, the idea that there are almost as many facets to moral choices as there are cases that call for choices, Baruch Brody takes issue with conventional bioethical wisdom and challenges the rigid principalism of contemporary bioethics. His views have been seen as controversial, but they are firmly held, and convincingly argued -- all of which have led him to be one of the most widely discussed and highly admired bioethicists of our time. He argues for the fundamental distinction between active and passive euthanasia, for a need to reconceptualize approaches to brain death, and for the right of providers to unilaterally discontinue life support. He shows support for the waiving of the requirement of informed consent for some research, for the widespread use of animals in research, and for the use of placebos in many international clinical trials.

When it comes to morality as it is practiced in medicine, Brody makes clear that the ethical issues are never as simple as black and white -- that there are myriad factors and fine nuances that can and should challenge decision making as it is commonly practiced in difficult medical cases. In this collection, delving thoughtfully and systematically into methodology, research ethics, clinical ethics, and Jewish medical ethics, he tackles thorny life-and-death questions head-on and fearlessly. He casts a light into all the corners of end-of-life decisions -- a field in which he has exemplary credentials -- while illuminating a new understanding of morality and ethics.

The introduction outlines Brody's approach, defines the terminology used, and contrasts his ethical positions with much of the competing literature. "Taking Issue" will be invaluable to students and scholars in medical ethics, bioethics, and philosophy of medicine.

Unfit for the Future argues that the future of our species depends on our urgently finding ways to bring about radical enhancement of the moral aspects of our own human nature. We have rewritten our own moral agenda by the drastic changes we have made to the conditions of life on earth. Advances in technology enable us to exercise an influence that extends all over the world and far into the future. But our moral psychology lags behind and leaves us ill equipped to deal with the challenges we now face. We need to change human moral motivation so that we pay more heed not merely to the global community, but to the interests of future generations. It is unlikely that traditional methods such as moral education or social reform alone can bring this about swiftly enough to avert looming disaster, which would undermine the conditions for worthwhile life on earth forever. Persson and Savulescu maintain that it is likely that we need to explore the use of new technologies of biomedicine to change the bases of human moral motivation. They argue that there are in principle no philosophical or moral objections to such moral bioenhancement. Unfit for the Future? challenges us to rethink our attitudes to our own human nature, before it is too late.

Introduction to Bioethics provides a comprehensive and yet concise coverage of the broad field of bioethics, dealing with the scientific, medical, social, religious and, where appropriate, political and international concerns. The book introduces the various modes of ethical thinking and then helps the reader to apply that thinking to issues relating to the environment, to plants and animals and to humans. Written in an accessible manner, Introduction to Bioethics focuses on key issues directly relevant to those studying courses ranging from medicine through to biology and agriculture. Ethical analysis is threaded throughout each chapter and supplementary examples are included to stimulate further thought. In addition there are numerous mini-case studies to aid understanding, together with key references and further reading.