This volume explores the ethics of making or expanding families through adoption or technologically assisted reproduction. For many people, these methods are separate and distinct: they can choose either adoption or assisted reproduction. But for others, these options blend together. For example, in some jurisdictions, the path of assisted reproduction for same-sex couples is complicated by the need for the partner who is not genetically related to the resulting child to adopt this child if she wants to become the child's legal parent.
The essays in this volume critically examine moral...

Drawing on the writings of German pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jennifer M. McBride constructs a groundbreaking theology of public witness for Protestant church communities in the United States. In contrast to the triumphal manner in which many Protestants have engaged the public sphere, The Church for the World shows how the church can offer a nontriumphal witness to the lordship of Christ through repentant activity in public life.

After investigating current Christian conceptions of witness in the United States, McBride offers a new theology for repentance as public...

To what extent should parents be allowed to use reproductive technologies to determine the characteristics of their future children? And is there something morally wrong with parents who wish to do this? Choosing Tomorrow's Children provides answers to these (and related) questions. In particular, the book looks at issues raised by selective reproduction, the practice of choosing between different possible future persons by selecting or deselecting (for example) embryos, eggs, and sperm.
Wilkinson offers answers to questions including the following. Do children have a 'right to an open...

Testing and screening for HIV and AIDS give rise to ethical, legal, and social issues of the most controversial and delicate kind. In this highly important book, an international team of eighteen doctors, philosophers, and lawyers present a fresh and thorough discussion of these issues. They not only aim to show the way to practical advances but also to provide an accessible guide to the debates for readers who have not been previously introduced to them. And they pay particular attention to the sensitive nature of the information yielded by a test for the HIV antibody. Together, the essays...

This important and timely volume in the Issues in Biomedical Ethics series gathers an impressive cast of philosophers, physicians, and lawyers from several countries and from several cultural perspectives who together offer accessible and up-to-date coverage of a host of crucial issues touching on the future of human reproduction. Articles from contributors such as Jonathan Glover, Bonnie Steinbock, Marie Fox, Guido de Wert, and Gamal I. Secour engage topics such as eugenics, fertility treatment, post-menopause, sperm donation, ovarian tissue transplants, and abortion.

Lainie Ross presents a rigorous critical investigation of the development of policy governing the involvement of children in medical research. She examines the shift in focus from protection of medical research subjects, enshrined in post-World War II legislation, to the current era in which access is assuming greater precedence. Infamous studies such as Willowbrook (where mentally retarded children were infected with hepatitis) are evidence that before the policy shift protection was not always adequate, even for the most vulnerable groups. Additional safeguards for children were first...

Rebecca Cook, Bernard Dickens, and Mahmoud Fathalla, leading international authorities on reproductive medicine, human rights, medical law, and bioethics, integrate their disciplines to provide an accessible but comprehensive introduction to reproductive and sexual health. They analyze fifteen case-studies, representing a wide array of recurrent problems, focusing particularly on resource-poor settings. Approaches to resolution are considered at clinical and health system levels. They also consider the kinds of social change that would relieve the underlying conditions of reproductive health...

What is health policy for? In Health and the Good Society, Alan Cribb addresses this question in a way that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. His core argument is that biomedical ethics should draw upon public health values and ethics; specifically, he argues that everybody has some share of responsibility for health, including a responsibility for promoting greater health equality. In the process, Cribb argues for a major rethink of the whole project of health education.

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...

The goals of healthcare and health policy, and the health-related dilemmas facing policy makers, professionals, and citizens are extensively analyzed and debated in a range of disciplines including public health, sociology, and applied philosophy. Health and the Good Society is the first full-length work that addresses these debates in a way that cuts across these disciplinary boundaries.
Alan Cribb's core argument is that clinical ethics needs to be understood in the context of public health ethics. This entails healthcare ethics embracing "the social dimension" of health in two...