Health care delivery has become institutionalized. As a result, health care organizations now have the power to determine who has access to what kind of health care and under what circumstances. They shape as well the ethics of the various health care professions. These developments have provoked controversies about what kind of obligations such health care organizations have to patients, caregivers, and society at large. In order to respond to these controversies, an account of health care organizational ethics has become necessary.
The essays in this volume:

-are drawn from an...

Reframing Disease Contextually will be of particular interest to philosophers of medicine, bioethicists, and philosophers. It may also be of value to medical professionals, historians of western medicine, and health policy makers who take interest in the conceptual foundations of medicine.

This book:
- provides an overview of key debates in the history of modern western medicine on the nature, knowledge, and value of disease;
- illustrates how these debates relate;
- provides a "contextual" or "localized" way of understanding disease;
- includes case...

It may be unnecessary to some to publish a text on sexuality in 1986 since the popular press speaks of the sexual revolution as if it were over and was possibly a mistake. Some people characterize society as too sexually obsessed, and there is an undercurrent of desire for a return to a supposedly simpler and happier time when sex was not openly dis cussed, displayed, taught or even, presumedly, contemplated. Indeed, we are experiencing something of a backlash against open sexuality and sexual liberation. For example, during the '60s and '70s tolerance of homosexual persons and homosexuality...

It may be unnecessary to some to publish a text on sexuality in 1986 since the popular press speaks of the sexual revolution as if it were over and was possibly a mistake. Some people characterize society as too sexually obsessed, and there is an undercurrent of desire for a return to a supposedly simpler and happier time when sex was not openly dis cussed, displayed, taught or even, presumedly, contemplated. Indeed, we are experiencing something of a backlash against open sexuality and sexual liberation. For example, during the '60s and '70s tolerance of homosexual persons and homosexuality...

This volume, which has developed from the Fourteenth Trans Disciplinary Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, September 5-8, 1982, at Tel Aviv University, Israel, contains the contributions of a group of distinguished scholars who together examine the ethical issues raised by the advance of biomedical science and technology. We are, of course, still at the beginning of a revolution in our understanding of human biology; scientific medicine and clinical research are scarcely one hundred years old. Both the sciences and the technology of medicine until ten or fifteen years ago had the feeling...

From the tone of the report by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Re search, one might conclude that the whole-brain-oriented definition of death is now firmly established as an enduring element of public policy. In that report, Defining Death: Medical, Legal and Ethical Issues in the Determination of Death, the President's Commission forwarded a uni form determination of death act, which laid heavy accent on the signifi cance of the brain stem in determining whether an individual is alive or dead: An individual who has...

CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVES AND CONTEMPORARY MEDICAL MORALS A Catholic perspective on medical morals antedates the current world- wide interest in medical and biomedical ethics by many centuries 5]. Discussions about the moral status of the fetus, abortion, contraception, and sterilization can be found in the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Teachings on various aspects of medical morals were scattered throughout the penitential books of the early medieval church and later in more formal treatises when moral theology became recog- nized as a distinct discipline. Still later,...

in a scientific way, and takes the patient and his family into his confidence. Thus he learns something from the sufferer, and at the same time instructs the invalid to the best of his power. He does not give his prescriptions until he has won the patient's support, and when he has done so, he steadilY aims at producing complete restoration to health by persuading the sufferer in to compliance (Laws 4. 720 b-e, [28]). This passage shows the perennial nature of the problems of treating the patient as a person. It shows as well the historical'depth of philosophical interest in medicine. The...

Over a period of a year, the symposium on clinical judgment has taken shape as a volume devoted to the analysis of how knowledge claims are framed in medicine and how choices of treatment are made. We hope it will afford the reader, whether layman, physician or philosopher, a useful perspective on the process of knowing what occurs in medicine; and that the results of the dis cussions at the Fifth Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine will lead to a better understanding of how philosophy and medicine can usefully challenge each other. As the interchange between physicians, philosophers, nurses...

Bioethics is a discipline still not fully explored in spite of its rather remark able expansion and sophistication during the past two decades. The prolifer ation of courses in bioethics at educational institutions of every description gives testimony to an intense academic interest in its concerns. The media have catapulted the dilemmas of bioethics out of the laboratory and library into public view arid discussion with a steady report of the so-called 'mira cles of modern medicine' and the moral perplexities which frequently accom pany them. The published work of philosophers, theologians,...