Bioethics

Bioethics was "born in the USA" and the values American bioethics embrace are based on American law, including liberty and justice. This book crosses the borders between bioethics and law, but moves beyond the domestic law/bioethics struggles for dominance by exploring attempts to articulate universal principles based on international human rights.

2nd ed. This book provides a concise analysis of areas in which the law has addressed issues in bioethics. Topics include assisted reproductive techniques and family-making, limitations on reproduction (including abortion, contraception and sterilization), the role of ethical and religious beliefs of health care professionals, the definition of death, end-of-life decision-making (including physician assisted death), genetics, research involving human subjects (including issues related to conflicts of interest), stem cell research, organ transplantation, and other emerging topics.

This groundbreaking volume is the first to analyze how and to what extent bioethics considerations influence today's judges. Previous books have attended to the law that governs bioethics problems, but this is the first to examine when and how bioethical issues impact judicial reasoning and decision-making. The volume examines the cutting-edge of the relationship of bioethics to law, and explores how law receives, assesses, and uses bioethics.

This volume contains all that the beginning reader or student needs to soundly grasp the ideas and issues involved in the field. Building on the model used by Peter Singer in his highly successful Companion to Ethics, the Companion to Bioethics consists of 46 specially written essays designed to present the key issues and concepts in bioethics in an authoritative yet always readable, non-technical manner. An unusually comprehensive index allows the reader to find terms and topics not listed in the titles of the essays themselves.A Companion to Bioethics is an essential work of reference for doctors, nurses, lawyers, journalists, philosophers, moral theologians, sociologists and everyone interested in the ethical issues that are transforming our lives. It will be applicable both to everyday health care practice, and to the far-reaching issues arising from the revolution in the biological sciences as applied to human ethics.

Jerry Menikoff is an assistant professor of law, ethics, and medicine at the University of Kansas.

Rebecca Cook, Bernard Dickens, and Mahmoud Fathalla, leading international authorities on reproductive medicine, human rights, medical law, and bioethics, integrate their disciplines to provide an accessible but comprehensive introduction to reproductive and sexual health. They analyze fifteen case-studies, representing a wide array of recurrent problems, focusing particularly on resource-poor settings. Approaches to resolution are considered at clinical and health system levels. They also consider the kinds of social change that would relieve the underlying conditions of reproductive health dilemmas.

Since Dolly the sheep was born, controversy has swirled around the technology of cloning. We recoil at the prospect of human copies, manufactured men and women, nefarious impersonators and resurrections of the dead. Such reactions have serious legal consequences: lawmakers have banned stem cell research along with the cloning of babies. But what if our minds have been playing tricks on us? What if everything we thought we knew about human cloning is rooted in intuition rather than fact? Human Cloning: Four Fallacies and their Legal Consequences is a rollicking ride through science, psychology and the law. Drawing on sources ranging from science fiction films to the Congressional Record, this book unmasks the role that psychological essentialism has played in bringing about cloning bans. It explains how hidden intuitions have caused conservatives and liberals to act contrary to their own most cherished ideals and values.

Since the cloning of human beings has become technically conceivable, a controversial ethical and legal debate on the desirability and admissibility of human cloning has evolved. The issue touches questions from different disciplines, such as biology, philosophy, theology and law. This book, although mainly focusing on the legal problems, therefore tries to find an interdisciplinary approach to this controversial subject. It contains contributions from philosophers, theologians, and a biochemist, as well as from national and international lawyers. In the first part, a philosophical and theological outline is presented by scholars considering the topic from different cultural and religious (Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish)viewpoints. Subsequently, the biological foundations are explained by leading scholars in this field. The final two parts are dedicated to the legal questions, considering first the situation under German constitutional law and then on the international plane. In the comprehensive Annex, the most relevant documents for the International (in particular from the UN), European and German legal systems are presented.

Ever since Dolly, the Scottish lamb, tottered on wobbly legs into our consciousness-followed swiftly by other animals: first, mice; then pigs that may provide human transplants, and even an ordinary house cat - thoughts have flown to the cloning of human beings. Legislators rushed to propose a ban on a technique that remains highly hypothetical, although some independent researchers have announced their determination to pursue the possibilities. Political scientist and well-known expert on reproductive issues, Andrea L. Bonnicksen examines the political reaction to this new-born science and the efforts to construct cloning policy. She also looks at issues that relate to stem cell research, its even newer sibling, and poses a key question: how does the response to Dolly guide us as we manage innovative reproductive technologies in the future?

Advances in reproductive and perinatal medicine have given rise to difficult ethical issues. Do all women have the right to choose whether to reproduce? What is the moral status of the foetus during various stages of gestation and what obligations do parents have to the foetus during this period? In this book Carson Strong develops an ethical framework that aims to help resolve these and many other issues of concern to health professionals, policymakers and the general public.

Today biological science is rising on a wall of worry. No other science has advanced more dramatically during the past several decades or yielded so many palpable improvements in human welfare. Yet, none except nuclear physics has aroused greater apprehensions among the general public and leaders in such diverse fields as religion, the humanities, and government. In this engaging book, Leon R. Kass, the noted teacher, scientist, humanist, and chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, and James Q. Wilson, the preeminent political scientist to whom four United States presidents have turned for advice on crime, drug abuse, education, and other crises in American life, explore the ethics of human cloning, reproductive technology, and the teleology of human sexuality. Although in their lively dialgoue both authors share a fundamental distrust of the notion of human cloning, they base their resistance on different views of the role of sexual reproduction and the role of the family. Professor Kass contends that in vitro fertilization and other assisted reproudction technologies that place the origin of human life in human hands have eroded the respect for the mystery of sexuality and human renewal. Professor Wilson, in contrast, asserts that whether a human life is created naturally or artificially is immaterial as long as the child is raised by loving parents in a two-parent family and is not harmed by the means of its conception. This accessible volume promises to inform the public policy debate over the permissible conduct of genetic research and the permissible uses of its discoveries.

When his teenaged son Christopher, brain-damaged in a car accident, developed a 106-degree fever following weeks of unconsciousness, John Campbell asked the attending physician for help. The doctor refused. Why bother? The boy's life was effectively over. Campbell refused to accept this verdict. He demanded treatment and threatened legal action. The doctor finally relented. With treatment, Christopher's temperature subsided almost immediately. Soon afterwards he regained consciousness and today he is learning to walk again. This story is one of many Wesley Smith recounts in this groundbreaking. Smith believes that American medicine is changing from a system based on the sanctity of human life into a starkly utilitarian model in which the medically defenceless are seen as having not just a 'right' but a 'duty' to die. Going behind the current scenes of our health care system, he shows how doctors withdraw desired care based on Futile Care Theory rather than provide it as required by the Hippocratic Oath. And how 'bioethicists' influence policy by considering questions such as whether organs may be harvested from the terminally ill and disabled.

Whether the law should permit voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide is one of the most vital questions facing all modern societies. Internationally, the main obstacle to legalisation has proved to be the objection that, even if they were morally acceptable in certain 'hard cases', voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide could not be effectively controlled; society would slide down a 'slippery slope' to the killing of patients who did not make a free and informed request, or for whom palliative care would have offered an alternative. How cogent is this objection? This book provides the general reader (who need have no expertise in philosophy, law or medicine) with a lucid introduction to this central question in the debate, not least by reviewing the Dutch euthanasia experience. It will interest all in any country whether currently for or against legalisation, who wish to ensure that their opinions are better informed.

"An excellent resource for entry-level courses on bioethics for health care practitioners, law students, and physicians." --Choice "Dworkin's provocative arguments... will challenge readers who have come to accept the law's intrusion as a necessary response to biomedical advances." --New England Journal of Medicine "Important and refreshing. Dworkin's conclusions regarding the limited role of law (and especially legislation) may come as a surprise to many.... When popular and political views are almost evenly divided, looking to legislation for a solution is a mistake." --Walter Wadlington The ethical and social dilemmas associated with abortion, sterilization, assisted reproduction, genetics, death and dying, and biomedical research have led many to turn to the legal system for solutions. Rogert Dworkin argues that resort to law often overlooks the limitations of legal institutions, and he suggests a more limited use of the legal system will produce more effective resolution of bioethical dilemmas.

Bioethics is a multidisciplinary field of law and one that can not be ignored. Bioethical and Evolutionary Approaches to Medicine and the Law is a comprehensive, scholarly analysis of bioethics and the development of its standards. The book is broken up into the following four parts: * Part I deals with scientific, religious, ethical and legal aspects of bioethics * Part II evaluates 100 current bioethical issues and sets forth specific approaches for their resolution * Part III focuses on medical, legal and other problems from beginning of life (overpopulation, birth control, in vitro fertilization, etc.) through end of life (physician assisted suicide, advance directives, euthanasia, etc.) * Part IV discusses the major bioethical issues in genetics and genetic engineering.

Public policy responses to escalating medical costs and constrained access pose fundamental challenges to health care law. Profound medical advances also generate many ethical dilemmas. This authoritative discussion considers how law and ethics respond to these driving social, economic, and political forces of innovation, crisis and reform. Topics include health care finance and delivery structures, treatment relationships, facility and insurance regulation, corporate and tax law, refusal of life support, organ donation, and reproductive technologies.

In this book, Schaller provides a thorough examination of the impact of biotechnology and biomedical advances on the everyday lives of people in modern society. Individuals and institutions are increasingly faced with a growing number of critical personal and ethical decisions that present themselves at all stages of life, from birth to death. These issues include the physician-patient relationship, informed consent, confidentiality and privacy, reproductive choices, end-of-life choices, health care, drug choices, and the allocation of scarce resources such as human organs, sperm, and eggs. In the absence of policies, we turn increasingly to the courts to resolve these issues. Schaller illuminates the role of the law in bioethics controversies.

This book, written by four internationally renowned bioethicists and first published in 2000, was the first systematic treatment of the fundamental ethical issues underlying the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Probing the implications of the remarkable advances in genetics, the authors ask how should these affect our understanding of distributive justice, equality of opportunity, the rights and obligations as parents, the meaning of disability, and the role of the concept of human nature in ethical theory and practice. The book offers a historical context to contemporary debate over the use of these technologies by examining the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questions raised in this book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about science and society and the rapid development of biotechnology, as well as to professionals in such areas as philosophy, bioethics, medical ethics, health management, law, and political science.

This pathfinding book thoroughly identifies and explores the legal and ethical dimensions of the new genetics and the Human Genome Project. While accepting the goals of modern genetics research, the book takes a critical approach to the Human Genome Project. More precise genetic information will likely result in genetic discrimination, and will threaten genetic privacy in employment and insurance.

In this impassioned book, Arthur L. Caplan, America's leading bioethicist, calls for an end to cynicism and mistrust in our approach to resolving health care issues. He brings this vision to discussions of some of the most exciting issues at the frontiers of medical ethics today--including doctor-assisted suicide, gene therapy, and the headline-grabbing case of Dolly the sheep and the possibility that human beings might one day be cloned.

This is a chronicle of the 1927 Supreme Court case 'Buck v. Bell', which approved laws allowing states to perform surgery in order to prevent 'feebleminded and socially inadequate' people from having children.

Biometrics is the most accurate form of identifiers and, when used properly, can greatly simplify life. However, biometrics raise new questions about personal privacy, surveillance, and the effects of government and corporate databases that register and hold fingerprint data and other biometric information. This book covers such topics as ID cards, data theft, authentication, and digital rights management.

Every human possesses more than one virtually infallible form of identification. Known as biometrics, examples include fingerprints, iris and retinal scans, hand geometry, and other measures of physical characteristics and personal traits. Advances in computers and related technologies have made this a highly automated process through which recognition occurs almost instantaneously. With concern about its information assurance systems and physical access control increasing, the Army has undertaken an assessment of how it can use biometrics to improve security, efficiency, and convenience. This report examines the sociocultural concerns that arise among soldiers, civilian employees, and the general public when the military mandates widespread use of biometrics. The authors see no significant legal obstacles to Army use of biometrics but recommend that the Army go beyond the provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974 to allay concerns related to this emerging technology. This report should be of interest to those responsible for access control as well as anyone concerned about privacy and technology issues.

Privacy is perhaps the most hallowed of American rights--and most people are concerned that new technologies available to governments and corporations threaten to erode this most privileged of rights. But in The Limits of Privacy, Amitai Etzioni offers a decidedly different point of view, in which the right to privacy is balanced against concern for public safety and health. Etzioni looks at five flashpoint issues: Megan’s Laws, HIV testing of infants, deciphering of encrypted messages, national identification cards, and medical records, and concludes that there are times when Amricans’ insistence on privacy is not in the best interests of society at large. He offers four clear and concise criteria which, when applied jointly, help us to determine when the right to privacy should be overridden for the greater public good.Almost every week headlines warn us that our cell phones are being monitored, our e-mails read, and our medical records traded on the open market. Public opinion polls show that Americans are dismayed about incursions against personal privacy. Congress and state legislatures are considering laws designed to address their concerns.Focusing on five flashpoint issues--Megan’s Law, mandatory HIV testing of infants, encryption of electronic documents, national identification cards and biometric identifiers, and medical records--The Limits of Privacy argues counterintuitively that sometimes major public health and safety concerns should outweigh the individual’s right to privacy. Presenting four concise criteria to determine when the right to privacy should be preserved and when it should be overridden in the interests of the wider community, Etzioni argues that, in some cases, we would do well to sacrifice the privacy of the individual in the name of the common good.