New Dimensions In Bioethics

In the last three decades, bioethics has matured into a field of study with several areas of concentration, including medical ethics, environmental ethics and more recently, genetic ethics. For reasons related to both the developmental history of the subject and to the poignancy of the problems presented, most textbooks and collections of essays have dealt with only a single area, medical ethics. In fact, to many not in the field, the word bioethics has become synonymous with medical ethics. The aim of this collection of essays, entitled New Dimensions in Bioethics: Science, Ethics and the Formation of Public Policy, is to enlarge this restrictive vision of the field as it is usually studied at universities. By combining essays relevant to medical ethics with companion essays on environmental ethics and genetic ethics, the book emphasizes similarities in the methods of analysis used in diverse bioethical problems, whether dealing with genes, with people or the environment. In this way, New Dimensions in Bioethics: Science, Ethics and the Formation of Public Policy, hopes to contribute to the intellectual unity of the subject and to suggest changes in the way bioethics can be taught and studied at both the graduate and undergraduate level.

This book takes the conversation between bioethics and health policy to a new level. Moving beyond principles and normative frameworks, bioethicists writing in the volume consider the actual policy problems faced by health care systems, while policy-makers reflect on the moral values inherent in both the process and content of health policy. The result is a vigorous dialogue with some of the nation's leading experts at the interface of ethics and health policy. the book provides a history of the values implicit in U.S. health policy, a discussion of the federal and state roles in policy making, an ethical examination of the social goals expressed through various policies, an analysis of the role of public opinion in the creation of health policy, and an exploration of the value of the private sector in health policy. In addition, the authors examine some of the major ethical controversies in health policy, such as the challenge of balancing ethical concerns with economic realities, the need to allocate scarce health resources, the call for heightened accountability, and the impact of various policies on vulnerable populations. The book concludes with an examination of the ethical issues in health services research, including the threats to privacy that arise in such research. To a greater extent than any previous volume, it establishes a strong connection between the disciplines of medical ethics and health policy.

Like its predecessor, New Dimensions in Bioethics, this volume developed out of a series of lectures at Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Each speaker in the Bioethics & Public Policy Seminar Series was invited because of her or his expertise in a given area of bioethics. Each of the more successful participants was invited to contribute a manuscript for publication. The essays are bound together by the application of an ethical analysis to scientific questions, and by consideration of policy implications. At its inception, bioethics was virtually synonymous with medical ethics. As the field grew and attracted new practitioners, it became clear that other applications of this new subject required extension of its scope. For example, environmental ethics, propelled by such authors as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, quickly developed a vigorous literature of its own. More recently, developments in the analysis of the human genome, the enticing medical possibilities offered by the therapeutic use of stem cells, the complexities surrounding the cloning of animals and possibly humans and the development of transgenic agricultural crops have given new impetus to the expansion of traditional bioethical horizons. Bioethics must now adjust to these new realities, for it is clear that public interest in the field is growing as these new challenges appear.

​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.

Examines some of the ethical questions raised by the capabilities of modern medicine.

The ethical issues we face in health care, justice, and human rights extend beyond national boundaries—they are global and cross-cultural in scope. Editors Wanda Teays and Alison Dundes Renteln have assembled the works of a diverse interdisciplinary and international team of bioethics experts into a comprehensive, innovative, and accessible resource. Following a consideration of theoretical frameworks that inform a global bioethics, units on human rights, life and death, and public health form an in-depth look at contemporary issues in the field. Each unit includes cutting edge analyses and thought-provoking case studies, as well as discussion prompts. Topics range from torture and lethal injection to euthanasia, abortion, medical tourism, vulnerable human subjects, to health equity, vaccination programs, mental health, the ethics of surrogacy, and more. The second edition includes new essays on • bioethics and environmental ethics • medical tourism • torture and solitary confinement • institutional review boards • pediatric genomics • the abortion debate • the ethics of surrogacy • issues in global health ethics • revirgination surgery • global mental health • feminist perspectives on global aging • ethical considerations for vaccination programs

Bioethics has become an important part of everyday dynamics, encompassing both clinical and research ethics. This edited collection aims to challenge some critical cornerstones of today's contemporary bioethical concerns and issues. The individual chapters were prepared by esteemed scholars with international background in their specialties. Nowadays technological revolution is reaching a whole new level, continuously challenging us to define what is human. Keeping this in mind, the authors provided comprehensive and thoughtful views on different bioethical issues, including cultural and social influences on contemporary bioethics, posthumanism and transhumanism, death, the critical importance of informed consent, prenatal genetic testing, gene and cell therapy, mandatory vaccinations, cannabis use, antidoping concerns, treatment of rare diseases and pain management, and finally educational and legislative lines of reasoning.

An examination of the ethical issues raised by the possibility of human life extension, including its desirability, unequal access, and the threat of overpopulation. Life extension—slowing or halting human aging—is now being taken seriously by many scientists. Although no techniques to slow human aging yet exist, researchers have successfully slowed aging in yeast, mice, and fruit flies, and have determined that humans share aging-related genes with these species. In New Methuselahs, John Davis offers a philosophical discussion of the ethical issues raised by the possibility of human life extension. Why consider these issues now, before human life extension is a reality? Davis points out that, even today, we are making policy and funding decisions about human life extension research that have ethical implications. With New Methuselahs, he provides a comprehensive guide to these issues, offering policy recommendations and a qualified defense of life extension. After an overview of the ethics and science of life extension, Davis considers such issues as the desirability of extended life; whether refusing extended life is a form of suicide; the Malthusian threat of overpopulation; equal access to life extension; and life extension and the right against harm. In the end, Davis sides neither with those who argue that there are no moral objections to life enhancement nor with those who argue that the moral objections are so strong that we should never develop it. Davis argues that life extension is, on balance, a good thing and that we should fund life extension research aggressively, and he proposes a feasible and just policy for preventing an overpopulation crisis.