Renowned philosophers and medical ethicists debate and discuss the profoundly important concepts of disease and health. Christopher Boorse begins with an extensive reexamination of his seminal definition of disease as a value-free scientific concept. In responding to all those who criticized this view, which came to be called "naturalism" or "neutralism," Boorse clarifies and updates his landmark ideas on this crucial question. Other distinguished thinkers analyze, develop, and oftentimes defend competing, nonnaturalistic theories of disease. Their combined thoughts review and update an issue...

Physician-Assisted Death is the eleventh volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews. We, the editors, are pleased with the response to the series over the years and, as a result, are happy to continue into a second decade with the same general purpose and zeal. As in the past, contributors to projected volumes have been asked to summarize the nature of the literature, the prevailing attitudes and arguments, and then to advance the discussion in some way by staking out and arguing forcefully for some basic position on the topic targeted for discussion. For the present volume on Physician-Assisted...

Biomedical Ethics Reviews is an annual publication designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. Ordinarily, more than one topic is discussed in each volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews. This year, however, we have decided to devote the entire volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews: 1988 to disussion of one topic, namely, AIDS. The ra- tionale for this decision should be clear: AIDS is arguably the most serious public health threat facing our nation today, and the char- acter of the disease is such that it creates special problems for ethicists,...

In Reproduction, Technology, and Rights, philosophers and ethicists debate the central moral issues and problems raised by today's revolution in reproductive technology. Leading issues discussed include the ethics of paternal obligations to children, the place of in vitro fertilization in the allocation of health care resources, and the ethical implications of such new technologies as blastomere separation and cloning. Also considered are how parents and society should respond to knowledge gained from prenatal testing and whether or not the right to abort should relieve men of the duty to...

Biomedical Ethics Reviews - 1990 is the eighth volume in a series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. Two topics are discussed in the present volume: (1) Should the United States Adopt a National Health Insurance Plan? and (2) Are the NIH Guidelines Adequate for the Care and Protection of Laboratory Animals? Each topic constitutes a separate section in our text; introductory essays briefly summarize the contents of each section. Bioethics is, by its nature, interdisciplinary in character. Recog- nizing this fact, the...

Bioethics and the Fetus: Medical, Moral, and Legal Issues is the ninth volume in the Biomedical Ethics Reviews series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. All of the essays in this volume examine moral and/or legal problems involving human fetal life; summaries of these essays may be found in the text's Introduction. Bioethics is, by its nature, interdisciplinary in character. Recog- nizing this fact, the authors represented in the present volume have made every effort to minimize the use of technical jargon. At the same...

This is the second volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews, a series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. Five topics are dis- cussed in the present volume. Section I, Public Policy andRe- search with Human Subjects, reviews the history of the moral issues involved in the history of research with human subjects, and confronts most of the major legal and moral problems involving research on human subjects. Questions addressed in this section range from those concerning informed and proxy consent to those dealing with the adequacy...

In the past decade the body of literature in the area of biomedical ethics has expanded at an astounding rate. Indeed, on every major topic, the literature in this area has mUltiplied, and continues to do so, so rapidly that one can easily fall behind important advances in our thinking about and understanding of the problems of contemporary bioethics. Awareness of this need to keep apace of developments in the area prompted a recent reviewer of our earlier collection Biomedical Ethics and the Law (Plenum, 2nd edition, 1979) to suggest that somebody ought to offer the service of providing a...

Biomedical Ethics Reviews: 1985 is the third volume in a series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central impor- tance in bioethics today. Four topics are discussed in the present volume: ( 1) Should citizens of the United States be permitted to buy, sell, and broker human organs? (2) Should sex preselection be legally proscribed? (3) What decision-making procedure should medical per- sonnel employ in those cases where there is a high degree of uncer- tainty? (4) What do we mean when we use the terms "health" and "disease"? Each topic constitutes a separate...

Biomedical Ethics Reviews - 1987 is the fifth volume in a series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. Three topics are discussed in the present volume: (1) Prescribing Drugs for the Aged and Dying; (2) Animals as a Source of Human Transplant Organs, and (3) The Nurse's Role: Rights and Responsibilities. Each topic constitutes a separate sec- tion in our text; introductory essays briefly summarize the contents of each section. Bioethics is, by its nature, interdisciplinary in character. Recognizing this fact, the authors...