Full Description
Questions concerning the role of doctors, abortion, mercy killings and genetics are troubling and highly problematic. They require a thorough examination and careful probing. This volume takes a step towards tackling them. Its design is both interdisciplinary and comparative,offerin g philosophical, legal and medical perspectives of scholars from North America, Europe and Israel who analyze how their respective countries try to cope with and find answers for pressing concerns. The book offers an overview of some of the pressing themes in medical ethics. The essays revolve around three main themes: appropriate roles for doctors; decisions at the beginnning and end of life; and medical ethics in the age of biotechnology, covering a wide range of theoretical and practical issues concerning a variety of problems that doctors, ethicists and scientists confront time and again. They consider the philosophical difficulties inherent in the concepts of medical ethics, but, at the same time, they are not confined strictly to the philosophical realm. The essays also consider practical judicial problems arising from biotechnology. All the authors share a belief in the urgency of the need to tackle and find adequate answers for pressing concerns. They probe ways to discover how we can learn from our past to promote better, more workable medical ethics in the future.
Contents
Part 1 Health-Care Resources and the Role of Doctors: Social Values, Socioeconomic Resources and Effectiveness Coefficients - an Ethical Model for Statistically Based Resource Allocation, Eike-Henner Kluge; The Ethical Professor of Medicine - Challenges for the 21st Century, Frederick Lowy; Open Heart, Shiva M'Hodu and John Lantos; Truth Telling, Antonella Surbone; The Evolution of a Hospital Ethics Committee - Philosophy and Practice, Gershon Growe. Part 2 Beginning- and End-of-Life Issues: Developments in Abortion Laws - Comparative and International Perspectives, Rebecca Cook; The Continuing Conflict Between Sanctity of Life and Quality of Life - From Abortion to Medically Assisted Death, Bernard Dickens; Advance Directive and Dementia, Ron Berghmans; A Circumscribed Plea for Active Euthanasia and Mercy Killings - the Patient's Right to Die with Dignity, R. Cohen-Almagor; Peter Singer's Theories and Their Reception in Germany, Jan C. Joerdan; Problems Involved in the Moral Justification of Medical Assistance in Dying - Coming to Terms with Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide, Evert van Leeuwen and Gerrit Kimsma; Euthanasia - Reflections on the Dutch Discussion, Govert den Hartogh. Part 3 The Age of Biotechnology: Jurisprudence in the Age of Biotechnology -Reflections on the "Nachmani" Case, Dalia Dorner; Reproductive Liberty and the Right to Clone Human Beings - Clones, Genes and Reproductive Autonomy - the Ethics of Human Cloning, John Harris; Genetic Research - Conversation Across Cultures, Joan McIver Gibson; Organ Transplantation Without Brain Death, Robert Truog; Genetic testing, Organ Transplantation and an End to Nondirective Counselling, Deni ELliott.
