Medical Ethics: Books

Bioethics: Principles, Issues, and Cases, explores the philosophical, medical, social, and legal aspects of key bioethical issues. Opening with a thorough introduction to ethics, bioethics, and moral reasoning, it then covers influential moral theories and the criteria for evaluating them. Integrating eighty-five readings - thirteen of them new to this edition - numerous cases, and abundant pedagogical tools, the book addresses the most provocative and controversial topics in bioethics. Updated throughout, the second edition incorporates new information on justice, health care, and health insurance reform along with more coverage of issues related to race and culture and of the moral challenges facing nurses and other health care professionals.

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 Healthcare ethics including the nature of the practitioner-patient relationship Public policy ethics and the implications of global and public health.

Throughout history people have engaged in heated debates over controversial issues. This volume shows how arguments have both changed and remained constant over time, proving the old adage that the more things change the more they stay the same. Readers will be fascinated by the way moral questions remain fundamentally consistent even as scientific and technological advances alter the debate.

This rich collection provides an in-depth look at major cases that have shaped the field of medical ethics. The book presents each famous (or infamous) case using extensive historical and contextual background, and then proceeds to illuminate it by careful discussion of pertinent philosophical theories and legal and ethical issues.

Principles of Biomedical Ethics provides a highly original, practical, and insightful guide to morality in the health professions. Authors Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress thoroughly develop andadvocate for four principles that lie at the core of moral reasoning in health care: respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice. Drawing from contemporary research--and integrating detailed case studies and vivid real-life examples and scenarios--they demonstrate how these primafacie principles can be expanded to apply to various conflicts and dilemmas, from how to deliver bad news to whether or not to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatments.

A physician says, "I have an ethical obligation never to cause the death of a patient," another responds, "My ethical obligation is to relieve pain even if the patient dies." The current argument over the role of physicians in assisting patients to die constantly refers to the ethical dutiesof the profession. References to the Hippocratic Oath are often heard. Many modern problems, from assisted suicide to accessible health care, raise questions about the traditional ethics of medicine and the medical profession. However, few know what the traditional ethics are and how they came intobeing. This book provides a brief tour of the complex story of medical ethics evolved over centuries in both Western and Eastern culture. It sets this story in the social and cultural contexts in which the work of healing was practiced and suggests that, behind the many different perceptions aboutthe ethical duties of physicians, certain themes appear constantly, and may be relevant to modern debates. The book begins with the Hippocratic medicine of ancient Greece, moves through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe, and the long history of Indian 7nd Chinese medicine,ending as the problems raised modern medical science and technology challenge the settled ethics of the long tradition.

Throughout history, men have repeatedly made judgments regarding their own conduct and that of their fellow men. Some acts have been judged to be right or good, while other acts have been denounced as wrong or evil. Ethical judgment in medicine, as in other areas of life, is an attempt to distinguish between good and bad conduct.

This book provides a collection of original essays on cutting-edge topics in medical ethics research. Leading philosophers give in-depth accounts of issues as diverse as embryo pre-selection, the role of autonomy in organ transplant markets, conscientious objection in the health care professions and neonatal euthanasia.

Looking Beneath the Surface explores Arab-Islamic and Western perspectives on medical ethical issues: genetic research and treatment, abortion, organ donation, and palliative sedation and euthanasia. The contributions in this volume discuss the state of the (medical) art, the role of laws, counseling, and spiritual counseling in the decision-making process. The different approaches to the ethical issues, ways of moral reasoning, become clear in these contributions, especially the role of tradition for Islam and the importance of autonomy for the West. Beneath the differences, however, the reader will also discover common values, such as the role of dignity and the value of life, and similar practices. Some of the main differences are sociocultural in nature, rather than religious.

The potential of modern medicine in a pluralistic world leads to the potential for moral conflict. The most prevalent bioethical theories often either overestimate or underestimate the amount of shared moral belief that can be used to address those conflicts. This work presents a means for taking seriously the pluralism in the modern world while recognizing the likelihood of moral "acquaintance" between persons with differing views.