The third edition of the fully documented exposition of explanation of health care patient rights from birth to death Now in its third edition, The Rights of Patients offers fully documented exposition and explanation of the rights of patients from birth to death. This concise reference covers topics such as informed consent, emergency treatment, refusing treatment, human experimentation, privacy and confidentiality, patient safety, and medical malpractice. The Rights of Patients is an invaluable resource not only for patients and their families but also for physicians, hospital administrators, medical and nursing students, and other health care workers.

George Annas, America's leading proponent of patient rights, spells them out for you in this revised, up-to-date edition of his groundbreaking classic. Thorough, comprehensive, and easy to follow-using a question-and-answer format in much of the text-The Rights of Patients explores all aspects of becoming an informed patient: * hospital organization * hospital rules * emergency treatment * admission and discharge * the patient rights movement * informed consent * surgery * obstetrical care * human experimentation and research * privacy and confidentiality * care of the dying * death, autopsy, and organ donation * medical malpractice.

George Annas, America's leading proponent of patient rights, spells them out for you in this revised, up-to-date edition of his groundbreaking classic. Thorough, comprehensive, and easy to follow-using a question-and-answer format in much of the text-The Rights of Patients explores all aspects of becoming an informed patient: * hospital organization * hospital rules * emergency treatment * admission and discharge * the patient rights movement * informed consent * surgery * obstetrical care * human experimentation and research * privacy and confidentiality * care of the dying * death, autopsy, and organ donation * medical malpractice.

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.

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.

"Carefully reasoned, clearly articulated, and pulls no punches...Boldly tackles the most contentious issues in bioethics and public policy....Worst Case Bioethics is certain to provoke strong responses across disciplines and ideologies on issues of great importance."- Mark Rothstein, Journal of Legal Medicine
"Annas persuasively argues in Worst Case Bioethics that basing policy on extreme nightmare possibilities leads to a distortion of fundamental ethical principles and legal protections." - Arthur L. Caplan, The Lancet
"Worst Case Bioethics offers a valuable consideration of how public health policy is sometimes shaped by fear in a counterproductive manner. The book is well-written, well-reasoned, and persuasive." - Thomas May, Science

American law, not philosophy or medicine, is the major force shaping American bioethics. This is both because law at its best fosters individual rights, equality, and justice, and because violation of the legal duty or "standard of care" a physician owes a patient can lead to a malpractice suit. The law has therefore had two conflicting impacts on medical ethics: the positive effect of eroding paternalism and replacing it with a patient-centered ethic; and the negative effect of encouraging physicians to be more concerned with avoiding litigation than doing the "right" thing.
Standard of Care explores the fundamental value conflicts confronting medicine and society by examining courtroom resolutions of real bioethical disputes, often of constitutional dimension. This case-based approach, which ranges from abortion to euthanasia, from AIDS to organ transplantation, from genetic research to the artificial heart and rationing, illuminates the value choices with which the power (and impotence) of medicine confronts us. George Annas urges health care professionals to go beyond the minimalist legal "standard of care" by promoting a vigorous, patient-centered medical ethics based on respect for human rights and responsibility to both patients and society. If modern medicine is to enhance human life, a reconceptualization of law as the beginning of ethical discourse, rather than as an instrument to end it, is essential. Such a discourse could enrich all our lives by helping us to articulate both a national and international agenda for human rights in health.

This timely and definitive book examines the nature, scope and proper place of the Nuremberg Code in medical research. Nuremberg has not only played a pivotal role in the ethics and law of human experimentation, it is also a seminal event in the history of codes of human ethics. This book analyses Nazi medicine and its role in setting the standards for human experimentation, and traces the role the Code has played in shaping research ethics and regulation from 1947 to the present.