The meaning and application of the principle of beneficence to issues in health care is rarely clear or certain. Although the principle is frequently employed to justify a variety of actions and inactions, very little has been done from a conceptual point of view to test its relevance to these behaviors or to explore its relationship to other moral principles that also might be called upon to guide or justify conduct. Perhaps more than any other, the principle of benef icence seems particularly appropriate to contexts of health care in which two or more parties interact from positions of...

Medicine is a complex social institution which includes biomedical research, clinical practice, and the administration and organization of health care delivery. As such, it is amenable to analysis from a number of disciplines and directions. The present volume is composed of revised papers on the theme of "Responsibility in Health Care" presented at the Eleventh Trans Disciplinary Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, which was held in Springfield, illinois on March 16-18, 1981. The collective focus of these essays is the clinical practice of medicine and the themes and issues related to...

The encounter between patient and physician may be characterized as the focus of medicine. As such, the patient-physician relationship, or more accurately the conduct of patients and physicians, has been the subject of considerable comment, inquiry, and debate throughout the centuries. The issues and concerns discussed, apart from those more specifically related to medical theory and therapy, range from matters of etiquette to profound questions of philosophical and moral interest. This discourse is impressive with respect both to its duration and content. Contemporary scholars and laypeople...

This volume offers a collection of writings on ethical issues regarding retarded persons. Because this important subject has been generally omitted from formal discussions of ethics, there is a great deal which needs to be addressed in a theoretical and critical way. Of course, many people have been very concerned with practical matters concerning the care of retarded persons such as what liberties, entitlements or advocacy they should have. Interestingly, because so much practical attention has been given to issues which are not discussed by ethical theorists, they offer a rare opportunity...

On May 13-15, 1982, some 50 scientists and scholars - physicians, philos ophers and social scientists - convened at Hasselby Castle in Stockholm for the first Nordic Symposium on the Philosophy of Medicine. The topics for the symposium included (1) the concepts of health and disease, (2) classification in medicine, and (3) causality and causal explanations in medicine. The majority of the participants were Scandinavian but the symposium was also able to welcome four distinguished guests from other parts of the world, Professors Stuart F. Spicker and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., U.S.A., Dr...

Interest in theories of virtue and the place of virtues in the moral life con- tinues to grow. Nicolai Hartmann [7], George F. Thomas [20], G. E. M. Anscombe [1], and G. H. von Wright [21], for example, called to our atten- tion decades ago that virtue had become a neglected topic in modem ethics. The challenge implicit in these sorts of reminders to rediscover the contribu- tion that the notion of virtue can make to moral reasoning, moral character, and moral judgment has not gone unattended. Arthur Dyck [3] , P. T. Geach [5], Josef Pieper (16], David Hamed [6], and, most notably, Stanley...

The expense of critical care and emergency medicine, along with widespread expectations for good care when the need arises, pose hard moral and political problems. How should we spend our tax d'ollars, and who should get help? The purpose of this volume is to reflect upon our choices. The authors whose papers appear herein identify major difficulties and offer various solutions to them. Four topics are discussed throughout the volume: First, encounters between patients and health professionals in critical situations in general, and where scarcity makes rationing necessary; second, allocation...

The idea of reviewing the ethical concerns of ancient medicine with an eye as to how they might instruct us about the extremely lively disputes of our own contemporary medicine is such a natural one that it surprises us to real ize how very slow we have been to pursue it in a sustained way_ Ideologues have often seized on the very name of Hippocrates to close off debate about such matters as abortion and euthanasia - as if by appeal to a well-known and sacred authority that no informed person would care or dare to oppose_ And yet, beneath the polite fakery of such reference, we have deprived...

We who live in this post-modern late twentieth century culture are still children of dualism. For a variety of rather complex reasons we continue to split apart and treat as radical opposites body and spirit, medicine and religion, sacred and secular, private and public, love and justice, men and women. Though this is still our strong tendency, we are beginning to discover both the futility and the harm of such dualistic splitting. Peoples of many ancient cultures might smile at the belatedness of our discovery concerning the commonalities of medicine and religion. A cur sory glance back at...

The idea of reviewing the ethical concerns of ancient medicine with an eye as to how they might instruct us about the extremely lively disputes of our own contemporary medicine is such a natural one that it surprises us to real ize how very slow we have been to pursue it in a sustained way_ Ideologues have often seized on the very name of Hippocrates to close off debate about such matters as abortion and euthanasia - as if by appeal to a well-known and sacred authority that no informed person would care or dare to oppose_ And yet, beneath the polite fakery of such reference, we have deprived...