The Vatican insists that human embryos must be treated as persons. This would block almost all "in vitro" fertilization and associated biomedical techniques. Moreover this demand is presented as a matter of natural justice, binding on Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and therefore to be incorporated into civil law. The author explores the basis on which the Vatican presumes to proclaim universally binding prescriptions, paying particular attention to those concerning the value of human life. Against this backgroud, the demand that the embryo be treated as a person is assessed. It is argued that the case in natural justice has not been made out, and that in persisting with its demand the Vatican is departing from the fundementals of the Catholic tradition.

A leading bioethicist offers critical insights into the scientific, ethical, and political implications of human genome editing. Designer babies, once found only in science fiction, have become a reality. We are entering a new era of human evolution with the advent of a technology called CRISPR, which allows scientists to modify our genes. Although CRISPR shows great promise for therapeutic use, it raises thorny ethical, legal, political, and societal concerns because it can be used to make permanent changes to future generations. What if changes intended for the good turn out to have unforeseen negative effects? What if the divide between the haves and have-nots widens as a result? Who decides whether we genetically modify human beings and, if so, how? Francoise Baylis insists that we must all have a role in determining our future as a species. The scientists who develop and use genome-editing tools should not be the only ones making decisions about future uses of the technology. Such decisions must be the fruit of a broad societal consensus. Baylis argues that it is in our collective interest to assess and steer the development and implementation of biomedical technologies. Members of the public with different interests and diverse perspectives must be among the decision makers; only in this way can we ensure that societal concerns are taken into account and that responsible decisions are made. We must be engaged and informed, think critically, and raise our voices as we create our future together. Sharp, rousing, timely, and thought-provoking, Altered Inheritance is essential reading. The future of humanity is in our hands.

Handing envelopes containing money or gifts to doctors in public health care is often seen as a remnant of socialism that continues as an integral part of the Lithuanian health care system. Rima Praspaliauskiene uses the envelope to explore complex doctor-patient interactions that go beyond notions of the gift or the bribe. She reshapes our definition of corruption and encourages seeing these practices as emerging forms of care that impede the neoliberal health care reforms effected in the post-Soviet era. Enveloped Lives extends the analytical categories of gift, care, money, and transparency, shifting attention away from material transactions by prioritizing relations and practices that transcend economic rationality. At a time when health care reforms and the costs of care are being widely debated, this book is a contribution to the larger discussion about the ethics and future of health care around the world.

In this age of increasing headlines about drug addiction and prescription drug abuse, this book is a timely revelation of how the nursing profession is also impacted by substance abuse. It allows nurses, who are the most trusted profession in society, who have been hidden within their profession and living with substance use disorders, to openly voice their personal experiences with addiction. Seven nurses detail their journey through family dynamics, early use as nursing students and later career nurses as they traveled deeper and deeper into their addiction. They discuss their shame, humiliation and dejection under the throes of the compelling forces of drugs and alcohol. They also describe how their family, other nurses, the healthcare system, and society assisted them in perpetuating their deception and denial about their disease. They explain how they lied, stole and cheated those around them to maintain their addiction. Each explains in detail the confrontations and the "jolt" and "wake up call" it took for them to awaken, become sober and truly enter recovery. They are all candid and forthright in order to help others that are impacted by this horrific and complex disease. They each share how recovery is possible when appropriate attitudes and tools are put in place to support nurses suffering from the devastation of addiction. Their stories bring attention to the importance of intervention, treatment, and recovery communities within the nursing profession. Recovery is emphasized as a "gift" by each of these nurses. The nurses and the researcher provide suggestions and recommendations to assist the healthcare community in addressing addiction in nursing. This book reveals how recovery for nurses is a major public health benefit.

As a mental health nurse, possessing an ethical sensibility and developing ethical reasoning is vital. This book is a practical introduction to the skills and knowledge the mental health nurse is professionally required to develop in their journey towards effectively managing complex ethical decisions. Written with the training mental health nurse in mind, this book is a clear and concise guide on how to approach common, ethically-complex situations mental health nurses will eventually find themselves faced with. It includes textboxes which take the reader into a 'real world' scenario to help them explore the moral and ethical issues discussed throughout the chapter. To ensure professional currency, the content of this book is mapped to the Nursing and Midwifery Council's pre-registration education standards of 2010, and uses a scenario-based approach in order to provide a pragmatic and robust resource. A Practical Introduction to Mental Health Ethics is essential reading for pre-registration mental health nursing students, while also being of value to registered mental health nurses working in ethically challenged areas such as dementia care, psychiatric intensive care units.

Provides up-to-date coverage of current thinking on rationing. The first part of the book consists of a series of debates between leading authorities putting forward their views for and against some of the most controversial issues in healthcare, such as rationing by age, and the role of central government. The second part makes suggestions for action, drawing comparisons with health care systems overseas, on the ethical uses of resources, the rationing of drugs by hospitals, and the role of citizens' juries. The book should be of interest to healthcare workers, managers, public health physicians and health economists.

In the early 1970s, well before the field ofbioethics had established itself in medicine or anywhere else, the Hastings Center organized a small meeting of law school professors. The question we put to them was: what could or should be done to stimulate legal interest in the field? The answer we got was a wise one. We should do nothing to forcefeed the interest. It should simply be allowed to develop on its own, by the ordinary route of attracting a following because of its inherent importance. That is just what happened, and one of the first young legal scholars drawn to what remains (oddly enough) a relatively small field was George Annas. The idea of a column on law and ethics for the Hastings Center Report was not by 1976 a particularly bold one. It had been clear to us from the outset of the Center in 1969, and the establishment of the Report in 1971, that the rapidly emerging moral problems in medicine and biology would have enormous legal and policy implications. Even so, we were hardly prepared for the large and steady number of cases that were to come before the courts during the 1970s and that were to continue unabated in the 1980s. But our concern about a column on the subject was of a more pedestrian kind.

Graeme Laurie stepped down from the Chair in Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh in 2019. This edited collection pays tribute to his extraordinary contributions to the field. Graeme often spoke about the importance of 'legacy' in academic work and forged a remarkable intellectual legacy of his own, notably through his work on genetic privacy, human tissue and information governance, and the regulatory salience of the concept of liminality. The essays in this volume animate the concept of legacy to analyse the study and practice of medical jurisprudence. In this light, legacy reveals characteristics of both benefit and burden, as both an encumbrance to and facilitator of the development of law, policy and regulation. The contributions reconcile the ideas of legacy and responsiveness and show that both dimensions are critical to achieve and sustain the health of medical jurisprudence itself as a dynamic, interdisciplinary and policy-engaged field of thinking.

The rapid development of reproductive technologies has questioned many essential concepts belonging to our symbolic universe, such as human reproduction, motherhood and fatherhood; the transmission of the biological and cultural inheritance of mankind and the constitution of the psychic subject. These concepts, however, are supported by ideologies and value systems which hide that they are but theoretical constructions; consequently, they are taken as describing the "natural" function of reproduction. In this sense, the technological development takes the form of an increasing medicalization of the human body, of the life, sexuality and desire of people, especially of women. All this requires that we think critically about the conditions of possibility of these technologies and their psychological and ethical implications. In this book the author provides a detailed and rigorous analysis which locates the reproductive technologies in the historical context of the progressive technification of the management of human life, and their relation to the social and medical discourses on femininity, maternity and infertility. From a psychoanalytic point of view, culture and its discontents, violence, domination, are related intimately to the problematic character of sexuality, which includes the uncertainties of our desires. Social, medical, anthropological and literary discourses try to define "maternal desire" in order to control it: the definitions which capture it in their nets are means to dominate desire as an object and to "construct" the desiring subject. But psychoanalysis (through the associations of the subjects in question) shows that we face here an impossible question: one thing is the enunciated "demand", what is said about one's own desire ("I want a child"), and a very different one is the unconscious desire which disturbs the conscious discourse and shows that there can be psychological obstacles that interfere with the accomplishment of conscious wishes, conflicts and contradictions emerging through the women's words. In this book, the circulation of representations between the individual imaginary and collective myths is the basis of a multidisciplinary complex and original point of view, which confronts a variety of discourses arising from psychoanalysis, medicine, journalism, ethnology, mythology and literature.

Who decides, and on what basis, how to treat a child with severe birth defects? Any decisions made on such cases are painful and complex, and have far-reaching consequences for society at large. Addressing the medical, legal, and ethical aspects of the issue, Robert Weir presents the first serious survey of the major arguments regarding selective non-treatment, which have been advanced by physicians, attorneys, and the judicial system.

The focus of bioethical debates on exceptional cases neglects the underlying values-like justice and community-that would lend to a broader, more well-rounded understanding of today's world. Discussions of ethical problems in health care too often concentrate on exceptional cases. Bioethical controversies triggered by experimental drugs, gene-edited babies, or life extension are understandably fascinating: they showcase the power of medical science and technology while addressing anxieties concerning health, disease, suffering, and death. However, the focus on rare individual cases in the media spotlight turns attention away from more pressing ethical issues that impact global populations, such as access to health care, safe food and water, and the prevention of emerging infectious diseases. In Bizarre Bioethics, Henk A.M.J. ten Have argues that this focus on bizarre cases leads to bizarre bioethics with a narrow agenda for ethical debate. In other words, although these extreme cases are undeniably real, they present a limited and skewed view of everyday moral reality. This focus also assumes that individuals are rational decision-makers, so that the role of feelings and emotions can be downgraded. Larger questions related to justice, solidarity, community, meaning, and ambiguity are not appreciated. Such questions used to be posed by philosophical and theological traditions, but they have been exorcised and marginalized in the development of bioethics. Science, ten Have writes, is not a value-free endeavor that provides facts and evidence: it is driven by underlying value perspectives that are often based on metaphors and world views from philosophical and theological traditions. Drawing on a rich analysis of the literature, ten Have explains how bioethical discussion can be enriched by these metaphors and develops a broader approach that critically delves into the imaginative world views that determine understanding of the world and human existence. Examining the roles of the metaphors of ghosts, monsters, pilgrims, prophets, and relics, ten Have illustrates how science and medicine are animated by imaginations that fuel the search for hope, salvation, healing, and a predictable future. Bizarre Bioethics invites students, researchers, policymakers and teachers interested in ethics and health care to think about the value perspectives on health and disease today.

This handbook is a thorough and state of the art overview of a central and fast-growing topic making it the ideal reference source for both students and scholars Essential reading for students and researchers in political philosophy, bioethics, public health ethics, or philosophy of medicine. The handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as medicine and public health This is the only handbook to pull together a thoroughly comprehensive overview of the topic of the philosophy of public health. This handbook will help the field of study organise itself into a proper subject: it will be a rallying point for any student and researcher interested in the subject All chapters are specially commissioned, written by an international team of renowned contributors.

Surgical ethics is the application of ethics to issues specific to surgery. This volume provides a collection of clinical case studies representing a wide range of the ethical issues surgeons confront today. It is an excellent text for teaching surgical ethics to surgical residents and medical students and a fascinating read for practicing surgeons. It is intended to engage the reader into participating in evidence-based ethical conflicts. The authors escort us through 71 brief, realistic, and ethically complex problems, offering a series of five possible resolutions to each and guiding us through the relative benefits and weaknesses of the options until a best ethical choice is defended. The volume includes sections on Consent and Disclosure, Self-Regulation, Research and Innovation, Conflicts of Interest, Business Dealings, and End of Life Issues, each with a brief introduction by the authors.

This volume is a collection of essays concerned with the morality of hu man treatment of nonhuman animals. The contributors take very different approaches to their topics and come to widely divergent conclusions. The goal of the volume as a whole is to shed a brighter light upon an aspect of human life-our relations with the other animals-that has recently seen a great increase in interest and in the generation of heat. The discussions and debates contained herein are addressed by the contributors to each other, to the general public, and to the academic world, especially the biological, philosophical, and political parts of that world. The essays are organized into eight sections by topics, each sec tion beginning with a brief introduction linking the papers and the sec tions to one another. There is also a general introduction and an Epilog that suggests alternate possible ways of organizing the material. The first two sections are concerned with the place of animals in the human world: Section I with the ways humans view animals in literature, philosophy, and other parts of human culture, and Section II with the place of animals in human legal and moral community. The next three sections concern comparisons between human and nonhuman animals: Section III on the rights and wrongs of killing, Section IV on the humanity of animals and the animality of humans, and Section V on questions of the conflict of human and animal interests."

Parents in the US and other societies are increasingly refusing to vaccinate their children, even though popular anti-vaccine myths - e.g. 'vaccines cause autism' - have been debunked. This book explains the epistemic and moral failures that lead some parents to refuse to vaccinate their children. First, some parents have good reasons not to defer to the expertise of physicians, and to rely instead upon their own judgments about how to care for their children. Unfortunately, epistemic self-reliance systematically distorts beliefs in areas of inquiry in which expertise is required (like vaccine immunology). Second, vaccine refusers and mainstream medical authorities are often committed to different values surrounding health and safety. For example, while vaccine advocates stress that vaccines have low rates of serious complications, vaccine refusers often resist vaccination because it is 'unnatural' and because they view vaccine-preventable diseases as a 'natural' part of childhood. Finally, parents who refuse vaccines rightly resist the utilitarian moral arguments - 'for the greater good' - that vaccine advocates sometimes make. Unfortunately, vaccine refusers also sometimes embrace a pernicious hyper-individualism that sanctions free-riding on herd immunity and that cultivates indifference to the interpersonal and social harms that unvaccinated persons may cause.

Civil Dialogue on Abortion provides a cutting-edge discussion between two philosophy scholars on each side of the abortion debate. Bertha Alvarez Manninen argues for her pro-choice view, but also urges respect for the life of the fetus, while Jack Mulder argues for his pro-life view, but recognizes that for the pro-life movement to be consistent, it must urge society to care more for the vulnerable. Coming together to discuss their views, but also to seek common ground, the two authors show how their differing positions nevertheless rest upon some common convictions. The book helps to provide a way forward for a divide that has only seemed to widen the aisle of public discourse in recent years. This engaging book will prove essential reading for students across multiple disciplines, including applied ethics, medical ethics, and bioethics, but will also be of interest to students of religious studies and women's studies.

Women most fully experience the consequences of human reproductive technologies. Men who convene to evaluate such technologies discuss "them": the women who must accept, avoid, or even resist these technologies; the women who consume technologies they did not devise; the women who are the objects of policies made by men. So often the input of women is neither sought nor listened to. The privileged insights and perspectives that women bring to the consideration of technologies in human reproduction are the subject of these volumes, which constitute the revised and edited record of a Workshop on "Ethical Issues in Human Reproduction Technology: Analysis by Women" (EIRTAW), held in June, 1979, at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some 80 members of the workshop, 90 percent of them women (from 24 states), represented diverse occupations and personal histories, different races and classes, varied political commitments. They included doctors, nurses, and scientists, lay midwives, consumer advocates, historians, and sociologists, lawyers, policy analysts, and ethicists. Each session, however, made plain that ethics is an everyday concern for women in general, as well as an academic profession for some.

Bioethics: The Basics is an introduction to the foundational principles, theories and issues in the study of medical and biological ethics. Readers are introduced to bioethics from the ground up before being invited to consider some of the most controversial but important questions facing us today. Topics addressed include: the range of moral theories underpinning bioethics arguments for the rights and wrongs of abortion, euthanasia and animal research health care ethics including the nature of the practitioner-patient relationship public policy ethics and the implications of global and public health '3 parents', enhancement, incidental findings and nudge approaches in health care. This thoroughly revised second edition provides a concise, readable and authoritative introduction for anyone interested in the study of bioethics.

Every day nurses are required to make ethical decisions in the course of caring for their patients. "Ethics in Nursing Practice" provides the background necessary to understand ethical decision making and its implications for patient care. The authors focus on the individual nurse's responsibilities, as well as considering the wider issues affecting patients, colleagues and society as a whole.
This third edition is fully updated, and takes into account recent changes in ICN position statements, WHO documents, as well as addressing current issues in healthcare, such as providing for the health and care needs of refugees and asylum seekers, bioethics and the enforcement of nursing codes. This publication from the International Council of Nurses is the essential resource for nurses seeking to understand ethical decision making, written by world experts in nursing ethics.

Narrative medicine, an interdisciplinary field that brings together the study of literature and medicine, offers both a way of understanding patient identity and a method for developing a clinician's responsiveness to patients. Scholars in narrative medicine maintain that the ability to be a close reader of texts, particularly literature, correlates with the ability to attend closely to one's patients, an ability referred to as narrative competence. While recognizing the genuine value of narrative competence in clinical encounters, and the value of narrative medicine in patient-centered care, Tara Flanagan examine the limits of self-narration for patients with cognitive and verbal deficits. In Narrative Medicine in Hospice Care: Identity, Practice, and Ethics though the Lens of Paul Ricoeur, Flanagan argues that the models of selfhood and care found in the work of Paul Ricoeur can offer a framework for clinicians, caregivers, and end-of-life patients regardless of their verbal and cognitive capabilities. In particular, Ricoeur's concept of the life-plan connects with the narrative method of life review in hospice and palliative care, and patient identity is a way to discuss religious and spiritual dimensions of patient experience.

Many intellectuals today embrace a postmodern view of the social construction of ethical values, which reduces to a form of ethical relativism. It is currently fashionable to avoid rights language, reject the central place of individual autonomy, and focus instead on the importance of community, while many people at the interface of ethics, medicine, and the social sciences in the developing world champion autonomy and individual rights in response to past or present authoritarian governments and paternalistic practices of physicians. Macklin advances this debate by examining the evidence and arguments on either side, and by presenting her view that ethical universals do exist but that they are compatible with a variety of culturally relative interpretations.

In Valuing Health Daniel M. Hausman provides a philosophically sophisticated overview of generic health measurement that suggests improvements in standard methods and proposes a radical alternative. He shows how to avoid relying on surveys and instead evaluate health states directly. Hausman goes on to tackle the deep problems of evaluation, offering an account of fundamental evaluation that does not presuppose the assignment of values to the properties and consequences of alternatives. After discussing the purposes of generic health measurement, Hausman defends a naturalistic concept of health and its relations to measures such as quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). In examining current health-measurement systems, Valuing Health clarifies their value commitments and the objections to relying on preference surveys to assign values to health states. Relying on an interpretation of liberal political philosophy, Hausman argues that the public value of health states should be understood in terms of the activity limits and suffering that health states impose. Hausman also addresses the moral conundrums that arise when policy-makers attempt to employ the values of health states to estimate the health benefits of alternative policies and to adopt the most cost-effective. He concludes with a general discussion of the difficulties of combining consequentialist and non-consequentialist moral considerations in policy-making.

This exciting book examines how human tissues and cells are being exchanged, commodified and commercialized by new health technologies. Through a discussion of emergent global 'tissue economies' the author explores the social dynamics of innovation in the fields of tissue engineering and stem cell science. The book explores how regenerative medicine configures and conceptualizes bodies and argues that the development of regenerative medicine is a feminist issue. In Regenerating Bodies, Kent critically examines the transformative potential of regenerative medicine and whether it represents a paradigm shift from more traditional forms of biomedicine. The book shows that users of these technologies are gendered and women's bodies are enrolled in the production of them in particular ways. So what is the value of a feminist bioethics for thinking about the ethical issues at stake? Drawing on extensive qualitative field research, Kent examines the issues around donation, procurement, banking and engineering of human tissues, and presents an analysis of the regulatory and policy debates surrounding these practices within Europe and the UK. The book considers the claims that regenerative medicine represents exciting possibilities for treating the diseases of ageing bodies, critically assessing what kind of futures are embodied in tissue and cell based therapies. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students within the social sciences, in health technology studies, bioethics, feminist studies, and gender and health studies.