The Bioethics Reader: Editors' Choice

A collection celebrating some of the best essays from the Blackwell journals, Bioethics and Developing World Bioethics. Contributors include Helga Kuhse, Michael Selgelid and Baroness Mary Warnock, former Chair of the British Government's Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology's. Traces some of the most important concerns of the 1980s, such as the ethics of euthanasia, reproductive technologies, the allocation of scarce medical resources, surrogate motherhood, through to a range of new issues debated today, particularly in the field of genetics. Includes contributions that are still as hotly debated today as they were 20 years ago and serves as a salutary reminder that free and open discussion is vital to the health of the discipline itself. Includes eight sections comprising some of the journals' best publications in methodological issues, the health care professional-patient relationship, public health ethics, research ethics, genetics, as well as beginning- and end-of-life issues. Will serve the academic bioethicists as well as students of bioethics as an excellent source book.

Table of Contents:
Introduction xi Ruth Chadwick, Helga Kuhse, Willem Landman, Udo Schüklenk, and Peter Singer Part I: Doing Bioethics 1 1. A Report from America When Philosophers Shoot from the Hip 3 James Rachels 2. Rethinking Medical Ethics: A View from Below 9 Paul Farmer and Nicole Gastineau Campos 3. What Can the Social Sciences Contribute to the Study of Ethics? Theoretical, Empirical and Substantive Considerations 33 Erica Hajmes 4. In Defense of Posthuman Dignity 58 Nick Bostrom Part II: Healthcare Professional–Patient Relationship 71 5. Patients’ Responsibilities in Medical Ethics 73 Heather Draper and Tom Sorell 6. Clinical Ethics and Nursing: ‘Yes’ to Caring, But ‘No’ to a Female Ethics of Care 91 Helga Kuhse 7. Psychiatric Ethics 104 Jennifer Radden 8. Female Genital Mutilation and Cosmetic Surgery: Regulating Non-Therapeutic Body Modification 119 Sally Sheldon and Stephen Wilkinson Part III: Just Health Care 143 9. Patents and Access to Drugs in Developing Countries: An Ethical Analysis 145 Sigrid Sterckx 10. Justice and Equal Opportunities in Health Care 162 John Harris 11. Constraints and Heroes 175 Carl Elliott Part IV: Public Health Ethics 187 12. The Genesis of Public Health Ethics 189 Ronald Bayer and Amy L. Fairchild 13. Ethics and Infectious Disease 209 Michael J. Selgelid 14. Vaccination and the Prevention Problem 226 Angus Dawson Part V: Research Ethics 241 15. International Research Ethics 243 Udo Schüklenk and Richard Ashcroft 16. Equipoise and International Human-Subjects Research 258 Alex John London 17. Developing Drugs for the Developing World: An Economic, Legal, Moral, and Political Dilemma 279 David B. Resnik 18. Some Questions about the Moral Responsibilities of Drug Companies in Developing Countries 301 Dan W. Brock 19. Social Responsibility and Global Pharmaceutical Companies 306 Norman Daniels Part VI: Genetics 311 20. Do Human Cells Have Rights? 313 Mary Warnock 21. Going to the Roots of the Stem Cell Controversy 328 Søren Holm 22. Designing Babies: Morally Permissible Ways to Modify the Human Genome 342 Nicholas Agar 23. The Non-Identity Problem and Genetic Harms – the Case of Wrongful Handicaps358 Dan W. Brock 24. Coding and Consent: Moral Challenges of the Database Project in Iceland 365 Vilhjálmur Árnason Part VII: Beginning of Life Issues 387 25. Is It Good to Make Happy People? 389 Stuart Rachels 26. Genes, Embryos, and Future People 408 Walter Glannon 27. Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children 434 Julian Savulescu 28. The Problem of Abortion: Essentially Contested Concepts and Moral Autonomy 447 Susanne Gibson 29. The Injustice of Unsafe Motherhood 459 Rebecca J. Cook and Bernard M. Dickens 30. The Limits of Conscientious Objection to Abortion in the Developing World 477 Louis-Jacques van Bogaert 31. Surrogate Mothering: Exploitation or Empowerment? 490 Laura M. Purdy Part VIII: End of Life 509 32. The Metaphysics of Brain Death 511 Jeff McMahan 33. Advance Directives, Autonomy and Unintended Death 551 Jim Stone 34. End of Life Care in HIV-Infected Children Who Died in Hospital 576 Lesley D. Henley Index 592

About the Author :
Ruth Chadwick has been co-editor of Bioethics since 2000. She is Distinguished Research Professor, Cardiff University, and Director of the ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen): a Lancaster–Cardiff collaboration. Helga Kuhse is an Honorary Research Associate of the Monash University Centre for Human Bioethics. She was Director of the Centre until June 1999. Kuhse is the author of Caring: Nurses, Women and Ethics, The Sanctity of Life Doctrine in Medicine: A Critique, co-author of Should the Baby Live? with Peter Singer, editor of Willing to Listen - Wanting to Die and has published numerous articles in scholarly journals. Willem Landman was one of the founding editors and is currently co-editor of Developing World Bioethics. He is CEO of the Ethics Institute of South Africa (EthicSA), Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch, and Ethics Advisor to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Geneva. He studied at the University of Oxford and taught bioethics at the University of North Carolina. Udo Schüklenk has been co-editor of Bioethics since 2000. He was also one of the founding editors and is currently co-editor of Developing World Bioethics. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics and Public Policy in the Philosophy Department of Canada's Queen's University. Peter Singer is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, One World, and The Ethics of What We Eat. He was the founding president of the International Association of Bioethics.

Review :
‘A nice synthesis of some developments in the field that will be useful to those who dabble in bioethics, or who are interested in seeing what new areas of research have emerged alongside new technological advances and growing globalization. It is a nice supplement to some of the more traditional collections of contributions to this growing field.’ J. Jeremy Wisnewski, PhD, Hartwick College From Metapsychology Online Reviews (Volume 12, Issue 7) For the full review please visit: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4071