Bioethics And The Future Of Medicine

Bioethics, born in the 1960s and 1970s, has achieved great success, but also has experienced recent growing pains, as illustrated by the case of Terri Schiavo. In The Future of Bioethics, Howard Brody, a physician and scholar who dates his entry into the field in 1972, sifts through the various issues that bioethics is now addressing--and some that it is largely ignoring--to chart a course for the future. Traditional bioethical concerns such as medical care at the end of life and research on human subjects will continue to demand attention. Brody chooses to focus instead on less obvious issues that will promise to stimulate new ways of thinking. He argues for a bioethics grounded in interdisciplinary medical humanities, including literature, history, religion, and the social sciences. Drawing on his previous work, Brody argues that most of the issues concerned involve power disparities. Bioethics' response ought to combine new concepts that take power relationships seriously, with new practical activities that give those now lacking power a greater voice. A chapter on community dialogue outlines a role for the general public in bioethics deliberations. Lessons about power initially learned from feminist bioethics need to be expanded into new areas--cross cultural, racial and ethnic, and global and environmental issues, as well as the concerns of persons with disabilities. Bioethics has neglected important ethical controversies that are most often discussed in primary care, such as patient-centered care, evidence-based medicine, and pay-for-performance. Brody concludes by considering the tension between bioethics as contemplative scholarship and bioethics as activism. He urges a more activist approach, insisting that activism need not cause a premature end to ongoing conversations among bioethicists defending widely divergent views and thcories.

"The extensive attention devoted to abortion has led Christians for too long to overlook much of the exploding bioethics agenda. Moreover, to focus only on 'issues' is to fail to address the profound changes taking place in the very nature of the medical profession. This book signals the commitment of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity to help expand the church's bioethical vision and to foster a more substantial Christian contribution to the public debate."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

​The goal of this open access book is to develop an approach to clinical health care ethics that is more accessible to, and usable by, health professionals than the now-dominant approaches that focus, for example, on the application of ethical principles. The book elaborates the view that health professionals have the emotional and intellectual resources to discuss and address ethical issues in clinical health care without needing to rely on the expertise of bioethicists. The early chapters review the history of bioethics and explain how academics from outside health care came to dominate the field of health care ethics, both in professional schools and in clinical health care. The middle chapters elaborate a series of concepts, drawn from philosophy and the social sciences, that set the stage for developing a framework that builds upon the individual moral experience of health professionals, that explains the discontinuities between the demands of bioethics and the experience and perceptions of health professionals, and that enables the articulation of a full theory of clinical ethics with clinicians themselves as the foundation. Against that background, the first of three chapters on professional education presents a general framework for teaching clinical ethics; the second discusses how to integrate ethics into formal health care curricula; and the third addresses the opportunities for teaching available in clinical settings. The final chapter, "Empowering Clinicians", brings together the various dimensions of the argument and anticipates potential questions about the framework developed in earlier chapters.

Evans closely examines the history of the bioethics profession.

Daniel Callahan---whose cofounding of The Hastings Center in 1969 was one of the most important milestones in the history of bioethics--has written on an uncommonly wide range of issues over a long career. They have moved back and forth between clinical care of individual patients and the ethical problems of health care research and delivery. Through his many writings, four core problems have recurred in all of his work, and influence each of the others. What is health and how has its understanding been shaped by medical progress and the culture of medicine and society? What is progress, a deep value in modern health care and how should we judge it? What kinds of technological innovations that come out of the drive for progress are really good for us-and what do we do when there is a clash between individual good and social good in the use of expensive technologies, a problem now evident in the unsustainable high costs of health care? How should our understanding of the place of an inevitable death in all our lives, and its place in medicine, help us to better think of the goals of medicine and the goals of our life in seeking a good death? Those four questions have been with bioethics from its beginning and will remain with it for the indefinite future. They are the roots of bioethics.

This book explores major bioethical issues emerging from the development and use of artificial intelligence in medical settings. The authors start by defining the past, present and future of artificial intelligence in medical settings and then proceed to address the resulting common and specific bioethical inquiries. The book discusses bioethical inquiries in two separate sets. The first set is comprised of ontological discussions mainly focusing on personhood and being an ethical agent of an artefact. The second set discusses bioethical issues resulting from the use of artificial intelligence. It focuses particularly on the area of artificial intelligence use in medicine and health services. It addresses the main challenges by considering fundamental principles of medical ethics, including confidentiality, privacy, compassion, veracity and fidelity. Finally, the authors discuss the ethical implications of involvement of artificial intelligence agents in patient care by expanding on communication skills in a case-based approach. The book is of great interest to ethicists, medical professionals, academicians, engineers and scientists working with artificial intelligence.

Should editing the human genome be allowed? What are the ethical implications of social restrictions during a pandemic? Is it ethical to use animals in clinical research? Is prioritizing COVID-19 treatment increasing deaths from other causes? Bioethics is a dynamic field of inquiry that draws on interdisciplinary expertise and methodology to address normative issues in healthcare, medicine, biomedical research, biotechnology, public health, and the environment. This Is Bioethics is an ideal introductory textbook for students new to the field, exploring the fundamental questions, concepts, and issues within this rapidly evolving area of study. Assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this accessible volume helps students consider both traditional and cutting-edge questions, develop informed and defensible answers, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a diverse range of ethical positions in medicine. The authors avoid complex technical terms and jargon in favor of an easy-to-follow, informal writing style with engaging chapters designed to stimulate student interest and encourage class discussion. The book also features a deep dive into the realm of global public health ethics, including the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It considers topics like triage decision-making, the proportionality of society's response to COVID-19, whether doctors have a professional obligation to treat COVID-19 patients, and whether vaccines for this virus should be mandatory. A timely addition to the acclaimed This Is Philosophy series, This Is Bioethics is the ideal primary textbook for undergraduate bioethics and practical ethics courses, and is a must-have reference for students in philosophy, biology, biochemistry, and medicine.

This book is one of the only texts to cover the history, methodology, and practice of bioethics. Compiling articles from well-established bioethical thinkers, Jecker et al. have created an edited volume unique in its scope of topics addressed. Bioethics will find use for both graduate students and professional students in law, medicine, nursing or other health-related fields who will face bioethical issues in future careers.