Ethics and Law in Modern Medicine is a unique book that explores the field of medical ethics and health care decision-making through hypothetical case studies. The truly unique feature of this volume is that each chapter sets forth a hypothetical fact pattern which includes role assignments to encourage participants to actively take part in group discussions and debate the controversial and cutting-edge topics that are presented. Each chapter includes in-depth discussion questions which thoroughly explore issues raised by the hypothetical fact patterns, and suggested readings provide...

Mental health issues are a growing concern in our modern Western society. This is part of an increasing interest in questions about health, quality of life, personal development, and self-fulfilment. However, most of what has been written so far has had its focus on mental illness or disease, the negative side of the coin, and few attempts have been made to discuss more thoroughly, from a philosophical perspective, what it is to be mentally healthy. The present book is such an attempt.
The author's aim is to analyze, philosophically, the notion of positive mental health'. In so doing a...

In industrialized countries, HIV/AIDS is now increasingly perceived as a chronic condition. Yet initially, before combination therapy became available, this pandemic was widely associated with premature or even imminent death. Receiving the diagnosis typically led to a dramatic biographical disruption.
This highly original book turns this basic feature of life with HIV into the vantage point for a fascinating analysis of Western subjectivity. Combining a host of empirical observations with the debate on the modern self, the author argues that the self-construction of people with HIV...

Preventive Medicine between Obligation and Aspiration is a study of ethical questions regarding mass screening, vaccination, and health policy programmes. These interventions aim to enhance public health but may also constrain personal autonomy and cause harm, and influence our moral views. So far, these issues have hardly been subject to systematic ethical analysis. This study aims to fill this gap by providing an overview of moral problems in preventive medicine and by explicating norms for good practice. Throughout the book it is argued that some moral concerns about prevention -...

Ethics and Law in Modern Medicine is a unique book that explores the field of medical ethics and health care decision-making through hypothetical case studies. The truly unique feature of this volume is that each chapter sets forth a hypothetical fact pattern which includes role assignments to encourage participants to actively take part in group discussions and debate the controversial and cutting-edge topics that are presented. Each chapter includes in-depth discussion questions which thoroughly explore issues raised by the hypothetical fact patterns, and suggested readings provide...

Mental health issues are a growing concern in our modern Western society. This is part of an increasing interest in questions about health, quality of life, personal development, and self-fulfilment. However, most of what has been written so far has had its focus on mental illness or disease, the negative side of the coin, and few attempts have been made to discuss more thoroughly, from a philosophical perspective, what it is to be mentally healthy. The present book is such an attempt.
The author's aim is to analyze, philosophically, the notion of positive mental health'. In so doing a...

For decades, health professionals have asserted the importance of public participation in interventions for health. Medicine has pursued patient participation in clinical decision-making. In the public health realm, target groups have been asked to assist in the design and implementation of initiatives for health. In practice, however, patients and populations expect health professionals to give advice and - in some cases - to make decisions on their behalf. This implies limits to the ideal of participation. In this innovative work, the author contrasts public and professional understandings...

The development of bioethics has presented us with an ever increasing number of very different discussions over the last four decades. Bioethicists were initially c- cerned about questions of reproduction, end of life, organ transplantation, and a broad range of moral problems raised by the forward march of the life sciences. Meanwhile these sciences grew to be a major in?uence in nearly all areas of our lives. Biotechnology has brought about considerable changes in agriculture, plant breeding, pharmacy, veterinary medicine and medicine in general. These scienti?c and technological changes in...

Issues in reproductive ethics, such as the capacity of parents to choose children, present challenges to philosophical ideas of freedom, responsibility and harm.This book responds to these challenges by proposing a new framework for thinking about the ethics of reproduction that emphasizes the ways that social norms affect decisions about who is born. The book provides clear and thorough discussions of some of the dominant problems in reproductive ethics - human enhancement and the notion of the normal, reproductive liberty and procreative beneficence, the principle of harm and discrimination...