Religious Perspectives On Bioethics

First published in 2004. Religious Perspectives in Bioethics surveys recent bioethics discussion in thirteen religious traditions. Christian contributions include chapters on Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, the Episcopal, German Protestant, and Baptist traditions, Reformed Christianity, and the Latter Day Saints. The volume also includes chapters on Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Daoism.

This book deals with the thorny issue of human rights in different cultures and religions, especially in the light of bioethical issues. In this book, experts from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism and Confucianism discuss the tension between their religious traditions and the claim of universality of human rights. The East-West contrast is particularly evident with regards to human rights. Some writers find the human rights language too individualistic and it is foreign to major religions where the self does not exist in isolation, but is normally immersed in a web of relations and duties towards family, friends, religion community, and society. Is the human rights discourse a predominantly Western liberal ideal, which in bioethics is translated to mean autonomy and free choice? In today’s democratic societies, laws have been drafted to protect individuals and communities against slavery, discrimination, torture or genocide. Yet, it appears unclear at what moment universal rights supersede respect for cultural diversity and pluralism. This collection of articles demonstrates a rich spectrum of positions among different religions, as they confront the ever more pressing issues of bioethics and human rights in the modern world. This book is intended for those interested in the contemporary debates on religious ethics, human rights, bioethics, cultural diversity and multiculturalism.

With the advance of biomedicine, certain individuals and groups are vulnerable because of their incapacities to defend themselves. The International Bioethics Committee as a UNESCO working group has for the last several years dedicated to deepen this principle of human vulnerability and personal integrity. This book serves to supplement this effort with a religious perspective given a great number of the world’s population is affiliated with some religious traditions. While there is diversity within each of these traditions, all of them carry in them the mission to protect the weak, the underprivileged, and the poor. Thus, here presented is a collection of papers written by bioethics experts from six major world religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism—who were gathered to discuss the meaning and implications of the principle of vulnerability in their respective traditions.

What role should religion play in a religiously pluralistic liberal society? Public bioethics unavoidably raises this question in a particularly insistent fashion. As the 20 papers in this collection demonstrate, the issues are complex and multifaceted. The authors address specific and highly contested issues as assisted suicide, stem cell research, cloning, reproductive health, and alternative medicine as well as more general questions such as who legitimately speaks for religion in public bioethics, what religion can add to our understanding of justice, and the value of faith-based contributions to healthcare. Christian (Catholic and Protestant), Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist viewpoints are represented. The first book to focus on the interface of religion and bioethics, this collection fills a significant void in the literature.

This book discuss the meaning and implications of the social and ethical implications of the notion of social responsibility in healthcare in six major world religions — Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, & Judaism. This collection of papers is based on a four-day workshop where bioethics experts from various religious traditions gathered. They discussed the ways in which their respective traditions could, or could not, uphold the tenets of Article 14 of UNESCO's Universal Declaration of bioethics and Human Rights. The different papers presented in this book are based on this interchange of ideas at the workshop. The book explores the potential points of convergence among the various perspectives presented, as well as a discussion on the ways in which their moral differences may be managed. The managing of these moral differences through international socio-ethical mechanisms, contributes significantly to the UNESCO Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights’ goal of simultaneously respecting religio-cultural pluralism while upholding a commitment to human rights.

Theologians and theologically educated participants in discussions of bioethics have been placed on the defensive during recent years. The dominance of religious perspectives and theological voices that marked the emergence and establishment of "bioethics" in the late 1960s and 1970s has eroded steadily as philosophers, lawyers, and others have relativized their role and influ ence, at best, or dismissed it entirely, at worst. The secularization of bioethics, which has occurred for a variety of reasons, has prompted some prominent writers to reflect on what has been lost. Daniel Callahan, for example writes, " . . . whatever the ultimate truth status of religious perspectives, they have provided a way of looking at the world and understanding one's own life that has a fecundity and uniqueness not matched by philosophy, law, or political theory. Those of us who have lost our reli gious faith may be glad that we have discovered what we take to be the reality of things, but we can still recognize that we have also lost something of great value as well: the faith, vision, insights, and experience of whole peoples and traditions who, no less than we unbelievers, struggled to make sense of things. That those goods are part of a garment we no longer want to wear does not make their loss anything other than still a loss; and it is not a neglible one" ([2], p. 2).

Discover the spiritual community's position on bioethics issues! Bioethics from a Faith Perspective: Ethics in Health Care for the Twenty-First Century offers a meaningful, rational, faith-oriented framework for deciding how to deal with important biomedical health care issues. Organ donation, managed care, the Human Genome Project, and medical technology that keeps people alive beyond their “natural” life span are some of the topics it illuminates through case analysis and resolution. Since almost all textbooks in bioethics omit the religious dimension of life (even though the field was inspired and stimulated by religious scholars at Princeton and Yale), this is an indispensable volume. While most people state their moral positions from the background of their religious traditions, many have not had the opportunity to study the relation between their faith perspectives and the difficult issues that arise in the pursuit of health care. This book shows the relevance, significance, and guidance that a faith perspective can offer for dealing with bioethical issues. This unique and thoughtful book: shows you how to distinguish and describe the relation between technical and ethical aspects of health-related issues provides you with a framework of moral principles, theories, values, and faith viewpoints teaches you the defining characteristics of a moral professional-client relationship related to faith helps you to discern when medical ethics and faith commitments are therapeutic and when they are not gives examples describing a moral problem, a faith perspective, and a justified position on that problem Since bioethics has been an amazing story of growth from the 1950s to the present day and is still expanding, there will be changes. Bioethics from a Faith Perspective stimulates that expansion by including the religious dimension. It is the perfect supplement to the existing literature on the subject.

Modern medicine has produced many wonderful technological breakthroughs that have extended the limits of the frail human body. However, much of the focus of this medical research has been on the physical, often reducing the human being to a biological machine to be examined, understood, and controlled. This book begins by asking whether the modern medical milieu has overly objectified the body, unwittingly or not, and whether current studies in bioethics are up to the task of restoring a fuller understanding of the human person. In response, various authors here suggest that a more theological/religious approach would be helpful, or perhaps even necessary. Presenting specific perspectives from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the book is divided into three parts: "Understanding the Body," "Respecting the Body," and "The Body at the End of Life." A panel of expert contributors—including philosophers, physicians, and theologians and scholars of religion— answer key questions such as: What is the relationship between body and soul? What are our obligations toward human bodies? How should medicine respond to suffering and death? The resulting text is an interdisciplinary treatise on how medicine can best function in our societies. Offering a new way to approach the medical humanities, this book will be of keen interest to any scholars with an interest in contemporary religious perspectives on medicine and the body.