Bioethics

Writing as a participant in the bioethics field, Andre offers a model to unify its diversity. Using the term "bioethics" broadly, to include all the medical humanities, she articulates ideals for the field, identifies its temptations and moral pitfalls, and argues for the central importance of certain virtues.

Arguing that human evolution has come to a stand-still, this book sets out to explore the evolutionary steps that have defined life on this planet. It describes the stages from cosmic to chemical and biological evolution and to the development of civilization and culture. From this scientific approach, the author concludes that new rules of ethics are required in order to maintain and improve the civilization and culture of humanity. Matare argues for corrective genetic interference and explores the moral implications.

This classic work has been instrumental in establishing nursing ethics as a legitimate and discrete field of inquiry and practice. BIOETHICS, A NURSING PERSPECTIVE, 3RD EDITION provides nurses with a text that covers the history and nature of mainstream bioethics and its relationship to nursing. It also stimulates critical thinking on bioethical issues as these relate to the real world of the practising nurse.

Onora O'Neill suggests that the conceptions of individual autonomy (so widely relied on in bioethics) are philosophically and ethically inadequate; they undermine rather than support relationships based on trust. Her arguments are illustrated with issues raised by such practices as the use of genetic information by the police, research using human tissues, new reproductive technologies, and media practices for reporting on medicine, science and technology. The study appeals to a wide range of readers in ethics, bioethics and related disciplines.

This readable and balanced book is an original discussion of contemporary issues in bioethics. Max Charlesworth argues that as there can be no public consensus on a set of core values--liberal societies accept a variety of religious, nonreligious, political and moral stances, there should be a plurality of ethical stances as well. On this basis he discusses issues such as the ending of human life, new reproductive technologies and the ethical distribution of limited healthcare resources, particularly hospital care.

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.

Globalizing Feminist Bioethics is a collection of new essays on the topic of international bioethics that developed out of the Third World Congress of the International Association of Bioethics in 1996. Rosemarie Tong is the primary editor of this collection, in which she, Gwen Anderson, and Aida Santos look at such international issues as female genital cutting, fatal daughter syndrome, use of reproductive technologies, male responsibility, pediatrics, breast cancer, pregnancy, and drug testing.

No other group of medical issues affects the genders as differently as those related to procreation. In this book, Tong offers an approach to feminist bioethics designed to guide the various factions towards a consensus.

Details goverment, private, and international response to the policy recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.