The Family Medical Decision Making And Biotechnology

This book examines the implications of Confucian moral and ontological understandings for medical decision-making, human embryonic stem cell research, and health care financing. The book reveals East Asian attitudes on the moral status of human embryos and the morality of embryonic stem cell research that are quite different from Christian and Muslim cultural perspectives. The book also discusses how Confucian cultural resources can help meet the challenges of health care financing.

East Asian medicine, biomedical research, and health care policy are framed by their own set of moral and cultural commitments. Chief among these is the influence of Confucian ideas. A rich portrayal is offered of the implications of Confucian moral and ontological understandings for medical decision-making, human embryonic stem cell research, and health care financing. What is offered is a multifaceted insight into what distinguishes East Asian bioethical reflections. This volume opens with an exploration of the Confucian recognition of the family as an entity existing in its own right and which is not reducible to its members or their interests. As the essays in this volume show, this recognition of the family supports a notion of family autonomy that contrasts with Western individualistic accounts of proper medical decision-making. There are analyses of basic concepts as well as explorations of their implications for actual medical practice. The conflicts in East Asian countries between traditional Confucian and Western bioethics are explored as well as the tension between the new reproductive technologies and traditional understandings of the family. The studies of East Asian reflections concerning the moral status of human embryos and the morality of human embryo stem cell research disclose a set of concerns quite different from those anchored in Christian and Muslim cultural perspectives. The volume closes with an exploration of how Confucian cultural resources can be drawn upon to meet the contemporary challenges of health care financing.

Ross here presents an original and controversial look at the moral principles that guide parents in making health care decisions for their children, and the role of children in the decision-making process. She opposes the current movement to increase child autonomy, in favor of respect for family autonomy and proposes significant changes in what informed consent allows and requires for pediatric health care decisions. The first systematic medical ethics book that focuses specifically on children's health care, Ross's work has important things to say to health care providers who work with children as well as to ethicists and public policy analysts.

In the wake of the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases, a wide-ranging international conversation was started regarding alternative thresholds for intervention and the different balances that can be made in weighing up the rights and interests of the child, the parent's rights and responsibilities and the role of medical professionals and the courts. This collection provides a comparative perspective on these issues by bringing together analysis from a range of jurisdictions across Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia. Contextualising the differences and similarities, and drawing out the cultural and social values that inform the approach in different countries, this volume is highly valuable to scholars across jurisdictions, not only to inform their own local debate on how best to navigate such cases, but also to foster inter-jurisdictional debate on the issues. The book brings together commentators from the fields of law, medical ethics, and clinical medicine across the world, actively drawing on the view from the clinic as well as philosophical, legal and sociological perspectives on the crucial question of who should decide about the fate of a child suffering from a serious illness. In doing so, the collection offers comprehensive treatment of the key questions around whether the current best interests approach is still appropriate, and if not, what the alternatives are. It engages head-on with the concerns seen in both the academic and popular literature that there is a need to reconsider the orthodoxy in this area.

Religion is a dominant force in the lives of many Americans. It animates, challenges, directs and shapes, as well, the legal, political, and scientific agendas of the new Age of Biotechnology. In a very real way, religion, biomedical technology and law are - epistemologically - different. Yet, they are equal vectors of force in defining reality and approaching an understanding of it. Indeed, all three share a synergetic relationship, for they seek to understand and improve the human condition. This book strikes a rich balance between thorough analysis (in the body), anchored in sound references to religion, law and medical scientific analysis, and a strong scholarly direction in the end notes. It presents new insights into the decision-making processes of the new Age of Biotechnology and shows how religion, law and medical science interact in shaping, directing and informing the political processes. This volume will be of interest to both scholars and practitioners in the fields of religion and theology, philosophy, ethics, (family) law, science, medicine, political science and public policy, and gender studies. It will serve as a reference source and can be used in graduate and undergraduate courses in law, medicine and religion.

Human population genetic research (HPGR) seeks to identify the diversity and variation of the human genome and how human group and individual genetic diversity has developed. This book asks whether developing countries are well prepared for the ethical and legal conduct of human population genetic research, with specific regard to vulnerable target group protection. The book highlights particular issues raised by genetic research on populations as a whole, such as the potential harm specific groups may suffer in genetic research, and the capacity for current frameworks of Western developed countries to provide adequate protections for these target populations. Using The People’s Republic of China as a key example, Yue Wang argues that since the target groups of HPGR are almost always from isolated and rural areas of developing countries, the ethical and legal frameworks for human subject protection need to be reconsidered in order to eliminate, or at least reduce, the vulnerability of those groups. While most discussion in this field focuses on the impact of genetic research on individuals, this book breaks new ground in exploring how the interests of target groups are also seriously implicated in genetic work. In evaluating current regulations concerning prevention of harm to vulnerable groups, the book also puts forward an alternative model for group protection in the context of human population genetic research in developing countries. The book will be of great interest to students and academics of medical law, ethics, and the implications of genetic research.

This volume addresses the proper character of patient informed consent to medical treatment and clinical research. The goal is critically to explore the current individually oriented approach to informed consent which grew out of the dominant bioethics movement that arose in the United States in the 1970s. In contrast to that individually oriented approach, this volume explores the importance of family-oriented approaches to informed consent for medical treatment and clinical research. It draws on both East Asian moral resources as well as a critical response to the ways in which the practice of informed consent has developed in the United States

This book explores the challenges of informed consent in medical intervention and research ethics, considering the global reality of multiculturalism and religious diversity. Even though informed consent is a gold standard in research ethics, its theoretical foundation is based on the conception of individual subjects making autonomous decisions. There is a need to reconsider autonomy as relational—where family members, community and religious leaders can play an important part in the consent process. The volume re-evaluates informed consent in multicultural contexts and features perspectives from Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It is valuable reading for scholars interested in bioethics, healthcare ethics, research ethics, comparative religions, theology, human rights, law and sociology.