Biomedical Ethics and the Law

ISBN-13: 9781461565635 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 658 str.

James M. Humber

Opis

In the past few years, an increasing number of colleges and universities have added courses in biomedical ethics to their curricula. To some extent, these additions serve to satisfy student demands for "relevance. " But it is also true that such changes reflect a deepening desire on the part of the academic community to deal effectively with a host of problems which must be solved if we are to have a health-care delivery system which is efficient, humane, and just. To a large degree, these problems are the unique result of both rapidly changing moral values and dramatic advances in biomedical technology. The past decade has witnessed sudden and conspicuous controversy over the morality and legality of new practices relating to abortion, therapy for the mentally ill, experimentation using human subjects, forms of genetic interven- tion, and euthanasia. Malpractice suits abound, and astronomical fees for malpractice insurance threaten the very possibility of medical and health-care practice. Without the backing of a clear moral consensus, the law is frequently forced into resolving these conflicts only to see the moral issues involved still hotly debated and the validity of the existing law further questioned. Take abortion, for example. Rather than settling the legal issue, the Supreme Court's original abortion decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), seems only to have spurred further legal debate. And of course, whether or not abortion is a mo rally ac- ceptable procedure is still the subject of heated dispute.

Spis treści

to Ethical Theory.- Roe v. Wade.- The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade.- Maher v. Roe.- Abortion and the Law.- A Defense of Abortion.- Abortion: The Avoidable Moral Dilemma.- Psychiatric Intervention.- The Myth of Mental Illness.- Mental Health and Mental Illness: Some Problems of Definition and Concept Formation.- Genetic Aspects of Schizophrenia.- Psychopathy and Moral Understanding.- Psychiatrists and the Adversary Process.- Ethics and Clinical Research.- Scientific Investigations on Man: A Medical Research Worker’s Viewpoint.- Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting with Human Subjects.- Informed (But Uneducated) Consent.- Realities of Patient Consent to Medical Research.- Ethical Issues Involved in Experimentation on the Nonviable Human Fetus.- Proxy Consent in the Experimentation Situation.- Ethical Issues Arising from the Possible Uses of Genetic Knowledge.- Implications of Prenatal Diagnosis for the Human Right to Life.- Implications of Prenatal Diagnosis for the Quality of, and Right to, Human Life: Society as a Standard.- Practical and Ethical Problems in Human Genetics.- Reproductive Rights and Genetic Disease.- On Justifications for Coercive Genetic Control.- Legal Rights and Moral Rights.- Privacy and Genetic Information.- Recombinant DNA.- The Recombinant DNA Debate.- The Ethics of Recombinant DNA Research.- The Problems in Prolongation of Life.- Active and Passive Euthanasia.- Choosing Not to Prolong Life.- The Allocation of Exotic Medical Lifesaving Therapy.- The Role of Moral Considerations in the Allocation of Exotic Medical Lifesaving Therapy.- A Statutory Definition of the Standards for Determining Human Death: An Appraisal and a Proposal.- Existentialism and the Fear of Dying.- The Belief in a Life after Death.- The Experience of Dying.