Person In Medical Ethics

As physicians are faced with new and wonderful options for saving lives, transplanting organs, and furthering research, they also must wrestle with new and troubling choices--who should receive scarce and vital treatment, how we determine when life ends, what limits should be placed on care for the dying, and more. This book by renowned theologian Paul Ramsey, first published thirty years ago, anticipated these moral and ethical issues and addressed them with cogency and power, providing the intellectual foundations for the field of bioethics. This second edition of Ramsey's classic work includes a new foreword by Margaret Farley and essays by Albert R. Jonsen and William F. May that help to locate and interpret Ramsey historically and intellectually. Praise for the earlier edition: "For its strong, well-argued positions, its documentation and references, and its assistance in bringing confused strands of thought into focus, The Patient as Person willbe used for many years."--Michael Novak, New York Times "Amid the plethora of books on medical ethics that merely skim the surface, this one solidly examines most aspects of the question--from the definition of death to organ transplantation."--Christianity Today "Notable for its clear moral reasoning and its thorough examination of all morally relevant issues."--Journal of Religion " Ramsey's] study is a masterpiece of thoroughness in evaluating conflicting moral claims which become explicit in crucial medical situations."--Dolores Dooley-Clarke, Philosophical Studies

The advances in molecular biology and genetics, medicine and neurosciences, in ethology and environmental studies have put the concept of the person firmly on the philosophical agenda. Whereas earlier times seemed to have a clear understanding about the moral implications of personhood and its boundaries, today there is little consensus on such matters. Whether a patient in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease is still a person, or whether a human embryo is already a person are highly contentious issues. This book tackles the issue of personhood and its moral implications head-on. The thirteen essays are representative of the major strands in the current bioethical debate and offer new insights into humanity's moral standing, its foundations, and its implications for social interaction. While most of the essays approach the issue by drawing on the rich intellectual tradition of the West, others offer a cross-cultural perspective and make available for ethical consideration the philosophical resources and the wisdom of the East. The contributors to this book are highly recognized philosophers, ethicists, theologians, and professionals in health care and medicine from East Asia (China, Japan), Europe, and North America. The first part of the book probes the foundations of personhood. Examining critically the main theories on personhood in contemporary philosophy, the authors offer alternatives that better respond to contemporary challenges and their implications for bioethics. The focus of the second part is firmly on the Confucian relational concept of the person and on the social constitution of personhood in traditional Japanese culture. While the essays challenge the individualistic features of personhood in the Western tradition, they lay the foundations for a richer concept that holds great promise for the resolution of moral dilemmas in modern medicine and health care. The third part of the book enters into a dialogue with the Christian tradition and draws on its spiritual heritage in the search for answers to the contemporary challenges to human dignity and value. Its focus is on the Catholic social thought and Lutheran theology. The fourth part addresses the moral status of persons in view of specific issues such as the effects of brain injury, gene therapy, and human cloning on personhood. It extends the scope of research beyond human beings and inquires also into the moral status of animals.

Dealing with some of the thorniest problems in medicine, from euthanasia to the distribution of health care resources, this book introduces the reasoning we can use to approach medical ethics. Exploring how medical ethics supports health professionals' work, it also considers the impact of the media, pressure groups, and legal judgments.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book examines the concept of care and care practices in healthcare from the interdisciplinary perspectives of continental philosophy, care ethics, the social sciences, and anthropology. Areas addressed include dementia care, midwifery, diabetes care, psychiatry, and reproductive medicine. Special attention is paid to ambivalences and tensions within both the concept of care and care practices. Contributions in the first section of the book explore phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to care and reveal historical precursors to care ethics. Empirical case studies and reflections on care in institutionalised and standardised settings form the second section of the book. The concluding chapter, jointly written by many of the contributors, points at recurring challenges of understanding and practicing care that open up the field for further research and discussion. This collection will be of great value to scholars and practitioners of medicine, ethics, philosophy, social science and history.

Clinical Ethics introduces the four-topics method of approaching ethical problems (i.e., medical indications, patient preferences, quality of life, and contextual features). Each of the four chapters represents one of the topics. In each chapter, the authors discuss cases and provide comments and recommendations. The four-topics method is an organizational process by which clinicians can begin to understand the complexities involved in ethical cases and can proceed to find a solution for each case.

Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values to the practice of clinical medicine and in scientific research. Medical ethics allow for people, regardless of background, to be guaranteed quality and principled care. It is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. These values include the respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. These tenets allow doctors, care providers, and families to create a treatment plan and work towards the same common goal without any conflict. Succeeding in the healthcare field means more than just making a diagnosis and writing a prescription. Healthcare professionals are responsible for convincing patients and their family members of the best course of action and treatments to follow, while knowing how to make the right moral and ethical choices. Ethical teaching should be an active part of training and should be taught in four division: basic ethics, clinical ethics, legal principles related to ethics and the ethics of research and affiliation. This book is a reference guide for physicians, healthcare providers and administrative staff. It looks at the ethical problems they face every day, gives the background and the ethical problem and then provides practical advice which can be easily implemented. This book provides the knowledge needed to understand who has the right to healthcare, the justice of clinical practice, what autonomy means for a patient giving consent, who is going to make any surrogate decisions and more.