The Bioethics Reader

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.

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

‘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

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.

This volume offers a compilation of articles chosen by the current and past editors of Bioethics and Developing World Bioethics, published in the journals during the last two decades. The Bioethics Reader's eight sections include some of the journals' best publications in areas comprising methodological issues, the health care professional-patient relationship, just health care, public health ethics, research ethics, genetics, as well as beginning- and end-of-life issues. The Bioethics Reader offers a good overview of discussions in the field of bioethics during the last twenty years. It will serve the academic bioethicists as well as students of bioethics as an excellent source book.

The Editors of this volume donate their royalties from the sale of this book to Phedisang, a Southern African grass-roots non-governmental organisation serving the needs of AIDS orphans (www.phedisang.org).