The completion of the human genome project in 2000 dramatically emphasized the imminent success of the genetic revolution. The ethical and social consequences of this scientific development are immense. From human reproduction to life-extending therapies, from the impact on gender and race to public health and public safety, there is scarcely a part of our lives left unaffected by the impact of the new genetics. A Companion to Genethics is the first substantial study of the multifaceted dimensions of the genetic revolution and its philosophical, ethical, social, and political significance. It brings together the best and most influential contemporary writing about genethics. Newly commissioned essays from prominent figures in the current debate provide a wide-ranging and fascinating scholarly analysis of all the issues that arise from this explosive science.

What is illness? Is it a physiological dysfunction, a social label, or a way of experiencing the world? How do the physical, social, and emotional worlds of a person change when they become ill? Can there be well-being within illness? In this remarkable and thought-provoking book, Havi Carel explores these questions by weaving together the personal story of her own illness with insights and reflections drawn from her work as a philosopher. Carel's fresh approach to illness raises some uncomfortable questions about how we all - whether healthcare professionals or not - view the ill, challenging us to become more thoughtful. Illness unravels the tension between the universality of illness and its intensely private, often lonely, nature. It offers a new way of looking at a matter that affects every one of us. Revised and updated throughout, the third edition of this groundbreaking volume includes a new chapter on organ transplantation. Illness: The Cry of the Flesh will prove essential reading to those studying philosophy, medical ethics, and medical anthropology, as well as those in the healthcare and medical professions. It will also be of interest to individuals who live with illness, and their friends and families.

Regional Perspectives in Bioethics" illustrates the ways in which the national and international political landscape encompasses persons from diverse and often fragmented moral communities with widely varying moral intuitions, premises, evaluations and commitments.

In the wake of the successful cloning of animals and the promises -- or fears -- of stem cell research, new discoveries in science and medicine need more than ever to be accompanied by careful moral reflection. Contending that concern over the ethical dimensions of these and other like issues are no longer just in the domain of those involved in medical practice, the third edition of "Ethics of Health Care" claims these are vital topics that should matter deeply to all citizens.

While stressing the Catholic tradition in health care ethics, "Ethics of Health Care" is ecumenical, incorporating a broader Christian tradition as well as humanistic approaches, and takes as common ground for mutual understanding the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations." This new third edition is a response to the many developments in theology and the startlingly rapid changes in the arenas of medicine and health care over the past decade, from the dominance of managed care to increased surgery on an "outpatient" basis; from hospice care for the dying to the increasing use of drugs in the treatment of mental illness.

Revised and thoroughly up-to-date, this third edition continues with its valuable teaching aids, including case studies, study questions, chapter summaries, a bibliography, and complete index.

The purpose of medical humanities is to improve the delivery of effective health care through a better understanding of disease - in society, and in the individual. The interfaces between the science of medicine and the arts, philosophy, sociology and law interpret causes and effects of disease. The field of medical ethics is the most prominent offspring of this wider debate, yet the context of disease in the life of the individual and of society is profound and far-reaching. The influences of medicine on the humanities and vice versa are all around, yet only recently have they been recognized in the wider world of health care.

Revolutionary advances in biomedical research and information systems technology pose new and difficult issues for American health care policy, especially in the context of managed care. Health Care Policy in an Age of New Technologies takes on this challenging array of issues, where the dignity of individual life meets the imperatives of the national-level health care system: the right to die, rationing of care, organ transplants, experiments with human embryos, genetic research, confidentiality of medical records, and other ethical dilemmas.

Chapters on a patient's bill of rights, and on medical education and physician training, link the book to policy issues of direct concern to the public and practitioners. Throughout the book, the authors place critical questions in their political, legal, social, economic, and ethical context. Each chapter ends with discussion points, and a multimedia bibliography directs readers to relevant films, documentaries, and case studies.

Revolutionary advances in biomedical research and information systems technology pose new and difficult issues for American health care policy, especially in the context of managed care. Health Care Policy in an Age of New Technologies takes on this challenging array of issues, where the dignity of individual life meets the imperatives of the national-level health care system: the right to die, rationing of care, organ transplants, experiments with human embryos, genetic research, confidentiality of medical records, and other ethical dilemmas.

Chapters on a patient's bill of rights, and on medical education and physician training, link the book to policy issues of direct concern to the public and practitioners. Throughout the book, the authors place critical questions in their political, legal, social, economic, and ethical context. Each chapter ends with discussion points, and a multimedia bibliography directs readers to relevant films, documentaries, and case studies.

As growing numbers of patients turn to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), the focus of attention has largely been on whether these therapies work and whether they are safe. These questions are central to further integration of CAM with orthodox medicine. But in the absence of formal regulation, it is equally critical to consider the ethical dimensions of the CAM therapeutic encounter.
In this book, Julie Stone demonstrates that ethical issues are no less relevant to CAM therapists than they are to doctors or any other group of health professionals. She provides CAM therapists with a detailed framework of the specific ethical issues which affect CAM practice to help practitioners think constructively about how ethics underpin their therapeutic work.
An Ethical Framework for Complementary and Alternative Therapists encourages critical and reflective practice, suggests practical problems to common problems, includes illustrative scenarios of ethical dilemmas faced by therapists and summarises key points. This timely book offers a comprehensive guide to this important area. Its challenging conclusions are as relevant to experienced practitioners as to students and newly qualified therapists. This book will also interest policy makers and professional bodies interested in strengthening and enhancing CAM's potential.

As growing numbers of patients turn to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), the focus of attention has largely been on whether these therapies work and whether they are safe. These questions are central to further integration of CAM with orthodox medicine. But in the absence of formal regulation, it is equally critical to consider the ethical dimensions of the CAM therapeutic encounter.
In this book, Julie Stone demonstrates that ethical issues are no less relevant to CAM therapists than they are to doctors or any other group of health professionals. She provides CAM therapists with a detailed framework of the specific ethical issues which affect CAM practice to help practitioners think constructively about how ethics underpin their therapeutic work.
An Ethical Framework for Complementary and Alternative Therapists encourages critical and reflective practice, suggests practical problems to common problems, includes illustrative scenarios of ethical dilemmas faced by therapists and summarises key points. This timely book offers a comprehensive guide to this important area. Its challenging conclusions are as relevant to experienced practitioners as to students and newly qualified therapists. This book will also interest policy makers and professional bodies interested in strengthening and enhancing CAM's potential.

Three decades after the first heart transplant surgery stunned the world, organs including eyes, lungs, livers, kidneys, and hearts are transplanted every day. But despite its increasingly routine nature-or perhaps because of it-transplantation offers enormous ethical challenges. A medical ethicist who has been involved in the organ transplant debate for many years, Robert M. Veatch explores a variety of questions that continue to vex the transplantation community, offering his own solutions in many cases.

Ranging from the most fundamental questions to recently emerging issues, "Transplantation Ethics" is the first complete and systematic account of the ethical and policy controversies surrounding organ transplants. Veatch structures his discussion around three major topics: the definition of death, the procurement of organs, and the allocation of organs. He lobbies for an allocation system-administered by nonphysicians-that considers both efficiency and equity, that takes into consideration the patient's age and previous transplant history, and that operates on a national rather than a regional level.

Rich with case studies and written in an accessible style, this comprehensive reference is intended for a broad cross section of people interested in the ethics of transplantation from either the medical or public policy perspective: patients and their relatives, transplantation professionals, other health care professionals and administrators, social workers, members of organ procurement organizations, and government officials involved in the regulation of transplants.

This is the first textbook of surgical ethics. It is a practical, clinically comprehensive, well-organized guide to ethical issues in surgical practice, research, and educatio written by leading figures in surgery and bioethics. The authors cover the surgeon-patient relationship, the full range of surgical patients, surgical education and research and surgery and managed care. Their chapters are not abstract discussions of ethical principles; rather, they connect directly with the everyday concerns of practising surgeons.

In this book Paul Carrick charts the ancient Greek and Roman foundations of Western medical ethics. Surveying 1500 years of pre-Christian medical moral history, Carrick applies insights from ancient medical ethics to developments in contemporary medicine such as advance directives, gene therapy, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, and surrogate motherhood. He discusses such timeless issues as the social status of the physician; attitudes toward dying and death; and the relationship of medicine to philosophy, religion, and popular morality. Opinions of a wide range of ancient thinkers are consulted, including physicians, poets, philosophers, and patients. He also explores the puzzling question of Hippocrates' identity, analyzing not only the Hippocratic Oath but also the Father of Medicine's lesser-known works.

Complete with chapter discussion questions, illustrations, a map, and appendices of ethical codes, "Medical Ethics in the Ancient World" will be useful in courses on the medical humanities, ancient philosophy, bioethics, comparative cultures, and the history of medicine. Accessible to both professionals and to those with little background in medical philosophy or ancient science, Carrick's book demonstrates that in the ancient world, as in our own postmodern age, physicians, philosophers, and patients embraced a diverse array of perspectives on the most fundamental questions of life and death.

Thirty years ago, English jurist Patrick Devlin wrote: "Is it not a pleasant tribute to the medical profession that by and large it has been able to manage its relations with its patients ... without the aid of lawyers and law makers."

Medical interventions at the beginnings and the endings of life have rendered that assessment dated if not defeated.

This book picks up some of the most important of those developments and reflects on the legal and social consequences of this metamorphosis over the past ten years, and will be of interest to students of law, sociology and ethics who want a considered and critical introduction to, and reflection on, key issues in these pivotal moments of human life.

Nursing staff of many specialities are taking on and developing their roles in new and advanced practice areas. Patients will be offered new services from highly skilled advanced nurse practitioners. Such nurses need guidance, direction and information to assist them in their new roles. This book will offer insight and guidance on a variety of issues that are likely to be encountered by the Nurse Practitioner in everyday practice. * *First book presenting ethical challenges at Nurse Practitioner level * * * Aims to guide practice and offer points for discussion and reflective thinking

Deckhead: An important examination of the theological, spiritual and ethical issues surrounding death.

What do faithful living and faithful dying mean as we near life's end? With all the technology and choices available to us today, making decisions about the end of life grows ever more difficult. As a result of all the theological and ethical issues that have arisen around the dying process in recent years, the 72nd General Convention of the Episcopal Church created a task force to study and report on these concerns. This is the report of the End-of-Life Task Force. In it, the Task Force responds to the broad range of theological, ethical, pastoral and policy issues that are generated by the need to provide loving and fitting care at the end of life.

Intended as a teaching document, Faithful Living, Faithful Dying will be useful as a discussion tool for the church, for individuals facing difficult decisions, for professionals, such as clergy and health care providers, and for those who make public policy.

From Harry and Louise through the McCaughey septuplets, this book explains stories and issues in health care ethics that have appeared in the news media. Written for the general reader in a pluralistic society, it outlines and applies principles of justice from the Catholic tradition to contemporary problems that increasingly affect us all.

This second edition contains extensive new material and new topics, including physician-assisted suicide, managed care, organ donation, genetic testing, cloning, and the question of futility. Aimed at a wide audience, this book will also be useful for introductory ethics courses in colleges and high schools.

The ability to reason ethically is an extraordinarily important aspect of professionalism in any field. Indeed, the greatest challenge in ethical professional practice involves resolving the conflict that arises when the professional is required to choose between two competing ethical principles. Ethical Reasoning in the Mental Health Professions explores how to develop the ability to reason ethically in difficult situations.

Other books merely present ethical and legal issues one at a time, along with case examples involving "right" and "wrong" answers. In dramatic contrast, Ethical Reasoning in the Mental Health Professions provides you with the needed background in methods of ethical reasoning and introduces an innovative nine-step model of ethical decision-making for resolving ethical dilemmas.

Ethical Reasoning in the Mental Health Profession discusses the ethical codes of both psychology and counseling. This interdisciplinary approach promotes a better understanding of the similarities and differences in the points of emphasis in the two codes, which, in turn, enriches your understanding of the range of ethical considerations relevant to the practice of the mental health professions.

Since the turn of the millennium, the potential for patients' knowledge to contribute to medical knowledge has been increasingly recognized by medical sociologists and anthropologists. Where previously such knowledge may have been written off as 'beliefs' and assumed to be inaccurate when it contradicted established medical science, it is increasingly recognized that patients-especially those with chronic conditions-can add a valuable perspective to the clinical knowledge of medical professionals. Sometimes this means working together to reassess treatment priorities, and at other times it may mean a patient-led movement to influence the direction of new research, based on patients' experiences. Ushiyama takes the case of eczema (atopic dermatitis)-a chronic condition with a history of patient-led controversy over treatment methods - as a case study in how patient knowledge has come to affect change in medical practice. Comparing ethnographic fieldwork from Japan and the UK, she builds a complex picture of the differences in approach to treatment in light of attitudes to patients' knowledge.

The question of how societies respond to our bodies' ills is one which has had trenendous hold on contemporary imaginations. This reader will include selections by the best thinkers in the ethics of health care, bioethics and philosophy of health care. Unlike the majority of collections that serve undergraduate and graduate courses in bioethics, the reader will stress a ider rabge of questions and invite enquiry that broadens the range of discourse.

Most available resources for teachers and students in biomedical ethics are based on a notion of medicine and of how to understand and illuminate its ethical problems that is at least two decades old. Meaning and Medicine dramatically expands the repertoire of resources for teachers and students of bioethics.
In addition to providing fresh perspectives on both traditional and emerging questions in bioethics, this Reader focuses on questions in social philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysics as they are raised by developments in contemporary health care.
A chief aim of this resource is to rekindle interest in seeing health care not solely as a set of practices so problematic as to require ethical analysis by philosophers and other scholars, but as a field whose scrutiny is richly rewarding for the traditional concerns of philosophy.

Does one need to be a doctor to deliver a baby, or to Should only doctors perform physical examinations, or administer anesthesia, or determine when a patient should be discharged from the hospital? These provocative questions strike at the very heart of what it means to be a doctor. Do We Still Need Doctors? offers an incisive look at the doctor's shifting roles and responsibilities in our rapidly changing health care system.
In addition to compelling firsthand accounts from his own medical practice, Lantos covers issues ranging from the growing emphasis on technology as healer and the physicians new role in the team-oriented health care system to the economic forces governing medicine and the limits of moral responsibility for patient care.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203904850

This book, written by a leading geneticist, examines the ethical and social issues raised by the genetic testing of children. The opinions of geneticists, ethicists and affected families are all included to give a balanced view of this controversial field. Issues covered include confidentiality, potential abuses of genetic information (eg the use of test results by insurance companies) and the value of predictive genetic testing.
The aim of the book is to improve awareness of the complexity of the issues raised and provide suggestions as to how the discussions must develop - it therefore raises new questions as well as answering those that already exist.

Coercive Care asks probing and challenging questions regarding the use of coercion in health care and the social services. The book combines philosophical analysis with comparative studies of social policy and law in a large number of industrialized countries.

Series Information:
Reflective Bioethics

The reorganization of general practice and the NHS mean that GPs now face many new and distinctive ethical dilemmas in their practice. With pressure on resources and an increasing concern to evaluate the outcomes of health care, GPs have additional responsibilities that could conflict with the primary objective of caring for the individual patient.
General Practice and Ethics explores the ethical issues that are encountered by GPs in their everyday practice, addressing two central themes; the uncertainty of outcomes and effectiveness in general practice and the changing pattern of general practitioners' responsibilities. Among the topics examined are:
* the ethical implications of the use of evidence-based medicine in general practice
* consent, autonomy and confidentiality in general practice
* the history of patient-centredness
* research ethics in general practice
General Practice and Ethics presents a topical and comprehensive analysis of the kinds of ethical dilemmas faced by GPs on a daily basis which will be useful to practitioners and students alike.