This book is aimed at analyzing the foundations of medical ethics by considering different moral theories and their implications for judgments in clinical practice and policy-making. It provides a review of the major types of ethical theory that can be applied to medical and bioethical issues concerning reproductive genetics. In response to the debate on the most adequate ethical doctrine to guide biomedical decisions, this book formulates views that capture the best elements in each, bearing in mind their differences and taking into account the specific character of medicine. No historically influential position in ethics is by itself adequate to be applied to reproductive decisions. Thus, this book attempts to offer a pluralistic approach to biomedical research and medical practice. One usually claims that there are some basic principles (non-maleficence, beneficence, confidentiality, autonomy, and justice) which constitute the foundations of bioethics and medical ethics. Yet these principles conflict with each other and one needs some criteria to solve these conflicts and to specify the scope of application of these principles. Exploring miscellaneous ethical approaches as introduced to biomedicine, particularly to reproductive genetics, the book shall elucidate their different assumptions concerning human nature and the relations between healthcare providers, recipients, and other affected parties (e.g. progeny, relatives, other patients, society). The book attempts to answer the question of whether the tension between these ethical doctrines generates conflict in the field of biomedicine or if these competing approaches could in some way complement each other. In this respect, lecturers and researchers in bioethics would be interested in this reading this book.

This book focuses on ethical issues faced by a variety of healthcare practitioners across the Anglophone African continent. This important resource contains in-depth discussions of the most salient current ethical issues by experts in various healthcare fields. Each profession is described from both an African and a South African perspective, and thus contributes to dialogue and critical thinking around African ethics and decision-making. In this way the book provides readers with an understanding of the ethical issues at hand in various professions, including the practical implications of the ethical issues and how to address those effectively. This is a beneficial resource for all those involved in the various healthcare professions addressed in this book, including undergraduate students, lecturers, researchers and practitioners across the continent. Simply put, with the dynamic changes and challenges in healthcare across the globe and in Africa, this is an indispensable resource for healthcare practitioners.

This handbook explores the ways biomedicine and pop culture interact while simultaneously introducing the reader with the tools and ideas behind this new field of enquiry. From comic books to health professionals, from the arts to genetics, from sci-fi to medical education, from TV series to ethics, it offers different entry points to an exciting and central aspect of contemporary culture: how and what we learn about (and from) scientific knowledge and its representation in pop culture. Divided into three sections the handbook surveys the basics, the micro-, and the macroaspects of this interaction between specialized knowledge and cultural production: After the introduction of basic concepts of and approaches to the topic from a variety of disciplines, the respective theories and methods are applied in specific case studies. The final section is concerned with larger social and historical trends of the use of biomedical knowledge in popular culture. Presenting over twenty-five original articles from international scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds, this handbook introduces the topic of pop culture and biomedicine to both new and mature researchers alike. The articles, all complete with a rich source of further references, are aimed at being a sincere entry point to researchers and academic educators interested in this somewhat unexplored field of culture and biomedicine.

This open access book provides an extensive review of ethical and regulatory issues related to human infection challenge studies, with a particular focus on the expansion of this type of research into endemic settings and/or low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Human challenge studies (HCS) involve the intentional infection of research participants, and this type of research is rapidly increasing in frequency worldwide. HCS are widely considered to be an especially promising approach to vaccine development, including for pathogens endemic to LMICs. However, challenge studies are sometimes controversial and raise complex ethical issues, some of which are especially salient in endemic and/or LMIC settings. Informed by qualitative interviews with experts in infectious diseases and bioethics, this book highlights areas of ethical consensus and controversy concerning this kind of research. As the first volume to focus on ethical issues associated with human challenge studies, it sets the agenda for further work in this important area of global health research; contributes to current debates in research ethics; and aims to inform regulatory policy and research practice. Insofar as it focuses on HCS in (endemic) settings where diseases are present and/or widespread, much of the analysis provided here is directly relevant to HCS involving pandemic diseases including COVID19.

This book takes a reproductive justice approach to argue that surrogacy as practised in the contemporary neoliberal biomarkets crosses the humanitarian thresholds of feminism. Drawing on her ethnographic work with surrogate mothers, intended parents and medical practitioners in India, the author shows the dark connections between poverty, gender, human rights violations and indignity in the surrogacy market. In a developing country like India, bio-technologies therefore create reproductive objects of certain female bodies while promoting an image of reproductive liberation for others. India is a classic example for how far these biomarkets can exploit vulnerabilities for individual requirements in the garb of reproductive liberty. This critical book refers to a range of liberal, radical and postcolonial feminist frameworks on surrogacy, and questions the individual reproductive rights perspective as an approach to examine global surrogacy. It introduces 'humanitarian feminism' as an alternative concept to bridge feminist factions divided on contextual and ideological grounds. It hopes to build a global feminist solidarity drawing on a 'reproductive justice' approach by recognizing the histories of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age and immigration oppression in all communities. This work is of interest to researchers and students of medical sociology and anthropology, gender studies, bioethics, and development studies.

This book is an interdisciplinary contribution to bioethics, bringing together philosophers, sociologists and Science and Technology Studies researchers as a way of bridging the disciplinary divides that have opened up in the study of bioethics. Each discipline approaches the topic through its own lens providing either normative statements or empirical studies, and the distance between the disciplines is heightened not only by differences in approach, but also disagreements over the values, interpretations and problematics within bioethical research. In order to converse across these divides, this volume includes contributions from several disciplines. The volume examines the sociological issues faced by interdisciplinary research in bioethics, the role of expertise, moral generalisations, distributed agency, and the importance of examining what is not being talked about. Other contributions try to take an interdisciplinary look at a range of specific situations, fetal alcohol syndrome in the media, citizen science, electronic cigarettes and bioethical issues in human geography.

This book discusses feature films that enrich our understanding of doctor-patient dilemmas. The book comprises general clinical ethics themes and principles and is written in accessible language. Each theme is discussed and illuminated in chapters devoted to a particular film. Chapters start with a discussion of the film itself, which shares details behind the making of the film; box-office and critical reception; casting; and other facts about production. The chapter then situates the film in a history of medicine and medical sociology context before it delves into the clinical ethics issues in the film, and how to use it as a teaching aid for clinical ethics. Readers will understand how each film in this collection served to bring particular clinical ethics issues to the public's attention or reflected medico-legal issues that were part of the public discourse. The book is a perfect instructor's guide for anyone teaching bioethics, healthcare ethics, medical sociology, medical history, healthcare systems, narrative medicine, or nursing ethics.

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

This book discusses outcomes of a study by the National Institute of Mental Health, Czech Republic, examining moral integrity in the post-communist Czech-speaking environment. Chapters map the history of the Euro-Atlantic ethical disciplines from moral philosophy and psychology to evolutionary neuroscience and socio-biology. The authors emphasize the biological and social conditionality of ethics and call for greater differentiation of both research and applied psychological standards in today's globalised world. Using a non-European ethical system - Theravada Buddhism - as a case study, the authors explore the differences in English and Czech interpretations of the religion. They analyse cognitive styles and language as central variables in formatting and interpreting moral values, with important consequences for cultural transferability of psychological instruments. This book will appeal to academics and other specialists in psychology, psychiatry, sociology and related fields, as well as to readers interested in the psychology of ethics.

This volume congregates articles of leading philosophers about potentials and potentiality in all areas of philosophy and the empirical sciences in which they play a relevant role. It is the first encompassing collection of articles on the metaphysics of potentials and potentiality. Potentials play an important role not only in our everyday understanding of objects, persons and systems but also in the sciences. An example is the potential to become an adult human person. Moreover, the attribution of potentials involves crucial ethical problems. Bioethics makes references to the theoretical concept "potential" without being able to clarify its meaning. However, despite its relevance it has not been made subject of philosophical investigation. Mostly, potentials are regarded as a subspecies of dispositions. Whilst dispositions are a flourishing field of research, potentials as such have not come into focus. Potentials like dispositions are modal properties. But already a first glance at the metaphysics of potentials shows that concerning their ascription potentials are more problematic than dispositions since "potential" means that an entity has the potential to acquire a property in the future. Therefore, potentials involve a time structure of the entities in question that is much more complex than those of dispositions. This handbook brings this important concept into focus in its various aspects for the first time. It covers the history of the concept as well as contemporary systematic problems and will be of special interest for philosophers in the fields of general metaphysics, philosophy of science and ethics, especially bioethics. It will also be of interest to scientists and persons concerned with bioethical problems.

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

This book is the first to bring together an interdisciplinary collection of essays on surrogacy and egg donation from three socially, legally and culturally distinct countries - India, Israel and Germany. It presents contributions from experts in the field of social and cultural sciences, bioethics, law as well as psychology and provides critical-reflective comparative analysis of the socio-ethical factors shaping surrogacy and egg donation practices across these three countries. This book highlights the importance of a comparative perspective to 'make sense' of controversies and transitions in this highly contested area of artificial reproductive technologies. It demonstrates how local developments cannot be isolated from global events and vice versa. Therefore, this volume can be used as a standard reference for anyone seeking to understand surrogacy and egg donation from a macro-perspective in the next decade.

This book presents the first critical examination of the overlapping ethical, sociocultural, and policy-related issues surrounding disasters, global bioethics, and public health ethics. These issues are elucidated under the conceptual rubric: Public health disasters (PHDs). The book defines PHDs as public health issues with devastating social consequences, the attendant public health impacts of natural or man-made disasters, and latent or low prevalence public health issues with the potential to rapidly acquire pandemic capacities. This notion is illustrated using Ebola and pandemic influenza outbreaks, atypical drug-resistant tuberculosis, and the health emergencies of earthquakes as focal points. Drawing on an approach that reckons with microbial, existential, and anthropological realities; the book develops a relational-based global ethical framework that can help address the local, anthropological, ecological, and transnational dynamics of the ethical issues engendered by public health disasters. The book also charts some of the critical roles that relevant local and transnational stakeholders may play in translating the proposed global ethical framework from the sphere of concept to the arena of action. This title is of immense benefit to bioethics scholars, public and global health policy experts, as well as graduate students working in the area of global health, public health ethics, and disaster bioethics.

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

This book provides a systematic analysis of the ethical implications of traditional and complementary medicine (T&CM), focusing on pragmatic solutions. The author uses a bioethical methodology called the "Ethical Matrix," to consider the impact of T&CM use for animals and the environment as well as for humans. A systematic search of the literature reveals that most published ethical concerns are related to the safety of T&CM use for humans. However, application of the Ethical Matrix demonstrates that the ethical implications for T&CM use are much broader. In this book, the author analyses the most serious implications, including adverse events related to homeopathy, the use of animals in T&CM products, and the impact of herbal medicine on the environment. Comparisons with the ethical implications of conventional biomedicine help readers to contextualise debate, and highlight aspects that may be unique to T&CM. Globally, many high-level health policy makers promote T&CM as an accessible and affordable healthcare option. However, their use is considered by some to be a waste of resources, unscientific, and unethical. Offering a frank analysis of this largely ignored field of healthcare ethics, this book is both timely and essential. It helps patients, policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and students gain the knowledge they need to make more informed decisions.

Genome Editing Techniques are seen to be at the frontier of current research in the field of emerging biotechnologies. The latest revolutionary development, the so-called CRISPR technology, represents a paradigmatic example of the ambiguity of such techniques and has resulted in an international interdisciplinary debate on whether or not it is necessary to ban the application of this technique by means of a moratorium on its use for human germline modifications, particularly in human embryos in the reproduction process. However, given that other germline engineering techniques like mitochondrial (mt) DNA transfer techniques are already permitted and applied, the question arises what lies at the root of the apparent social unease about the modification of the human germline by Genome Editing Techniques like CRISPR. Against this background, the book seeks to make a substantial contribution to the current debate about a responsible and participatory framework for research on emerging biotechnologies by analysing underlying perceptions, attitudes, arguments and the reasoning on Genome Editing Techniques.

This book summarizes the contributions at an April 2016 conference held at Albany Medical College, Reproductive Ethics: New Challenges and Conversations. Reproductive ethics does not suffer from a lack of challenging issues, yet a few "hot button" issues such as abortion and surrogacy seem to attract most of the attention, while other issues and dilemmas remain relatively underdeveloped in bioethics literature. The goal of this book is to explore and expand the range of topics addressed in reproductive ethics. This is a multi-disciplinary book bringing together philosophers, clinicians, sociologists, anthropologists, and other scholars whose research or clinical interests touch reproductive issues. The results of this compilation are a comprehensive and unique discussion of the evolving issues in the rapidly changing field. The majority of the popular reproductive ethics anthologies were published at least 10 years ago. The field of reproductive ethics would benefit from a new anthology that addresses some of the perennial dilemmas in reproductive ethics (e.g. abortion, sex selection) from updated perspectives and that also covers new technologies that have emerged only in the last few years, such as social egg freezing.

This book discusses 'how' to respectfully and responsibly include pregnant women in clinical research. In sharp contrast, the existing literature predominantly focuses on the reasons 'why' the inclusion of pregnant women in clinical research is necessary - viz., to develop effective treatments for women during pregnancy, to promote fetal safety, to reduce harm to women and fetuses from suboptimal care, and to allow access to the benefits of research participation. This book supports the shift to a new default position, whereby pregnant women are included in clinical research unless researchers argue convincingly for their exclusion. This shift raises many as yet unexplored ethical and policy questions about existing barriers to the equitable inclusion of pregnant women in research. This book is original in three key ways. First, it presents an unparalleled depth of analysis of the ethics of research with pregnant women, bringing together many of the key authors in this field as well as experts in research ethics and in vulnerability who have not previously applied their work to pregnant women. Second, it includes innovative theoretical work in ethics and disease specific case studies that highlight the current complexity and future challenges of research involving pregnant women. Third, the book brings together authors who argue both for and against including more pregnant women in formal clinical trials.

This book takes as its point of departure a humble cell lying on the intersection of ideas as diverse and yet interlaced as life, knowledge, commerce, governance, and ethics. It seeks to deepen the understanding of stem cell entities and the concerns, hopes, and aspirations that shape and make them viable therapeutic entities in the context of rapid globalization. Several key intersections between individual, group, and institutional relationships have become central to locating and debating the production of stem cells today. This edited collection addresses three overarching concerns: regenerating the notion of ethics, the emerging therapeutic horizons, and the position of the patient. As a whole this book seeks to explain how stem cells are accommodated, contested, and used in contemporary India and around the globe through an informed unpacking of issues underpinning contestation and promotion bestriding these technological developments. The authors offer a truly multi-disciplinary perspective, stimulating conversation between the social sciences, biological sciences and the patient. The concerns expressed and highlighted by these conversations are embedded in a vast geo-political expanse stretching from India to Euro-America and will be of great interest to academics and practitioners across fields including science technology studies, medicine and international development.

This book is about the philosophy of de-extinction. To make an extinct species 'de-extinct' is to resurrect it by creating new organisms of the same, or similar, appearance and genetics. The book describes current attempts to resurrect three species, the aurochs, woolly mammoth and passenger pigeon. It then investigates two major philosophical questions such projects throw up. These are the Authenticity Question-'will the products of de-extinction be authentic members of the original species?'-and the Ethical Question-'is de-extinction something that should be done?' The book surveys and critically evaluates a raft of arguments for and against the authenticity or de-extinct organisms, and for and against the ethical legitimacy of de-extinction. It concludes, first, that authentic de-extinctions are actually possible, and second, that de-extinction can potentially be ethically legitimate, especially when deployed as part of a 'freeze now and resurrect later' conservation strategy.

This book supports the emerging field of vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA) for face and upper-limb transplants by providing a revised, ethically appropriate consent model which takes into account what is actually required of facial and upper extremity transplant recipients. In place of consent as permission-giving, waiver, or autonomous authorization (the standard approaches), this book imagines consent as an ongoing mutual commitment, i.e. as covenant consent. The covenant consent model highlights the need for a durable personal relationship between the patient/subject and the care provider/researcher. Such a relationship is crucial given the recovery period of 5 years or more for VCA recipients. The case for covenant consent is made by first examining the field of vascularized composite allotransplantation, the history and present understandings of consent in health care, and the history and use of the covenant concept from its origins through its applications to health care ethics today. This book explains how standard approaches to consent are inadequate in light of the particular features of facial and upper limb transplantation. In contrast, use of the covenant concept creates a consent model that is more appropriate ethically for these very complex surgeries and long-term recoveries.

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

This book provides an elaboration and evaluation of the dominant conceptions of genetic counseling as they are accounted for in three different models: the teaching model; the psychotherapeutic model; and the responsibility model. The elaboration of these models involves an identification of the larger traditions, visions and theories of communication that underwrite them; the evaluation entails an assessment of each model's theses and ultimately a comparison of their adequacy in response to two important concerns in genetic counseling: the contested values of non-directiveness and the recognition of differences across perspectives, with special focus on how religious and spiritual beliefs of patients are coordinated with the networks of meaning in genetics. Several insights are made explicit in this project through the work of Robert Brandom. Brandom's deontic scorekeeping model demonstrates how dialogue is at the root of grasping a conceptual content. Against this backdrop, professional communications such as genetic counseling can be seen as late developments in linguistic practices that have structural challenges. Brandom's model reminds us that the professional needs the client's understanding to grasp conceptual content in a particular context.

This book clarifies the meaning of the most important and pervasive concepts and tools in bioethical argumentation (principles, values, dignity, rights, duties, deliberation, prudence) and assesses the methodological suitability of the main methods for clinical decision-making and argumentation. The first part of the book is devoted to the most developed or promising approaches regarding bioethical argumentation, namely those based on principles, values and human rights. The authors then continue to deal with the contributions and shortcomings of these approaches and suggest further developments by means of substantive and procedural elements and concepts from practical philosophy, normative systems theory, theory of action, human rights and legal argumentation. Furthermore, new models of biomedical and health care decision-making, which overcome the aforementioned criticism and stress the relevance of the argumentative responsibility, are included.

This book examines the ethics, politics and aesthetics of veganism in contemporary culture and thought. Traditionally a lifestyle located on the margins of western culture, veganism has now been propelled into the mainstream, and as agribusiness grows animal issues are inextricably linked to environmental impact as well as to existing ethical concerns. This collection connects veganism to a range of topics including gender, sexuality, race, the law and popular culture. It explores how something as basic as one's food choices continue to impact on the cultural, political, and philosophical discourse of the modern day, and asks whether the normalization of veganism strengthens or detracts from the radical impetus of its politics. With a Foreword by Melanie Joy and Jens Tuidor, this book analyzes the mounting prevalence of veganism as it appears in different cultural shifts and asks how veganism might be rethought and re-practised in the twenty-first century.