Chance Encounters: A Bioethics for a Damaged Planet by
In this rigorous and necessary book, Kristien Hens brings together bioethics and the philosophy of biology to argue that it is ethically necessary for scientific research to include a place for the philosopher. As well as ethical, their role is conceptual: they can improve the quality and coherence of scientific research by ensuring that particular concepts are used consistently and thoughtfully across interdisciplinary projects. Hens argues that chance and uncertainty play a central part in bioethics, but that these qualities can be in tension with the attempt to establish a given theory as scientific knowledge: in describing organisms and practices, in a sense we create the world. Hens contends that this is necessarily an ethical activity.
The Global Bioethics of Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights by
Human annihilation has never been so easy. Artificial intelligence-guided genetic-engineered nanotechnology and robotics (AI-GNR) are widely recognized as our most transformative technological revolution ever, yet we do not even have a common moral language to unite our pluralistic world to prevent an AI apocalypse should this revolution explode out of our control. This book is the first known comprehensive global bioethical analysis of AI and AI-GNR by defining the Thomistic-Aristotelian personalist foundation of the rights and duties-based social contract framework of the United Nations, and then applying it to AI. As such, it creates a compelling approach which will appeal to scientists, health professionals, policy makers, politicians, students, and anyone interested in our shared survival around shared solutions.
Principles of Green Bioethics: Sustainability in Healthcare by
Health care is ubiquitous in the industrialized world. Yet, every medical development, technique, and procedure impacts the environment. Green bioethics synthesizes environmental ethics and biomedical ethics, thus creating an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable health care. Notably, green bioethics addresses not the structure of environmental sustainability in health-care institutions but the sustainability of individual health-care offerings.
Towards Neurobioethics by
From time to time, a particular science achieves such great success that people are tempted to elevate it to the condition of prima philosophia and then to try to explain everything else from its perspective. Thus, physics becomes physicalism, history becomes historicism, and so on. Nowadays, the big science is the investigation of the nervous system, particularly the brain. The new paradigm is, then, given by neuroscience and everything else seems to require its prefix: neuroeconomy, neuroeducation, neurolaw, neurotechnology, neuroethics, and neuropolitics, among others.
Wounded Planet: How Declining Biodiversity Endangers Health and How Bioethics Can Help by
Exploring the interconnectedness of human health, biodiversity, and bioethics.We all depend on environmental biodiversity for clean air, safe water, adequate nutrition, effective drugs, and protection from infectious diseases. Today's healthcare experts and policymakers are keenly aware that biodiversity is one of the crucial determinants of health—not only for individuals but also for the human population of the planet. Unfortunately, rapid globalization and ongoing environmental degradation mean that biodiversity is rapidly deteriorating, threatening planetary health on a mass scale
Acres of Skin by
At a time of increased interest and renewed shock over the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, Acres of Skin sheds light on yet another dark episode of American medical history. In this disturbing expose, Allen M. Hornblum tells the story of Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison.
Examining Tuskegee by
The forty-year Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which took place in and around Tuskegee, Alabama, from the 1930s through the 1970s, has become a profound metaphor for medical racism, government malfeasance, and physician arrogance. Susan M. Reverby's Examining Tuskegee is a comprehensive analysis of the notorious study of untreated syphilis among African American men, who were told by U.S. Public Health Service doctors that they were being treated, not just watched, for their late-stage syphilis. With rigorous clarity, Reverby investigates the study and its aftermath from multiple perspectives and illuminates the reasons for its continued power and resonance in our collective memory.
Human Medical Experimentation: From Smallpox Vaccines to Secret Government Programs by
Thanks to medical experiments performed on human subjects, we now have vaccines against smallpox, rabies, and polio. Yet the advances that saved lives too often involved the exploitation of vulnerable populations. Covering the history of human medical experimentation from the time of Hippocrates to today, this work will introduce readers to the topic through a mixture of essays and ready-reference materials. The book covers the experiments themselves; the people, companies, and government agencies that carried them out; the relevant medical and sociopolitical background; and the legislation and other protective measures that arose as a result.
Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by
The accomplishments of pioneering doctors such as John Peter Mettauer, James Marion Sims, and Nathan Bozeman are well documented. It is also no secret that these nineteenth-century gynecologists performed experimental caesarean sections, ovariotomies, and obstetric fistula repairs primarily on poor and powerless women. Medical Bondage breaks new ground by exploring how and why physicians denied these women their full humanity yet valued them as “medical superbodies” highly suited for medical experimentation.In Medical Bondage, Cooper Owens examines a wide range of scientific literature and less formal communications in which gynecologists created and disseminated medical fictions about their patients, such as their belief that black enslaved women could withstand pain better than white “ladies.”
Mental Health in the War on Terror by
Neil Krishan Aggarwal's timely study finds that mental-health and biomedical professionals have created new forms of knowledge and practice in their desire to understand and fight terrorism. In the process, the state has used psychiatrists and psychologists to furnish knowledge on undesirable populations, and psychiatrists and psychologists have protected state interests.Professional interpretation, like all interpretations, is subject to cultural forces. Drawing on cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology, Aggarwal analyzes the transformation of definitions for normal and abnormal behavior in a vast array of sources: government documents, professional bioethical debates, legal motions and opinions, psychiatric and psychological scholarship, media publications, and policy briefs.
Victims and Survivors of Nazi Human Experiments by
While the coerced human experiments are notorious among all the atrocities under National Socialism, they have been marginalised by mainstream historians. This book seeks to remedy the marginalisation, and to place the experiments in the context of the broad history of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Paul Weindling bases this study on the reconstruction of a victim group through individual victims'life histories, and by weaving the victims'experiences collectively together in terms of different groupings, especially gender, ethnicity and religion, age, and nationality.
African Perspectives on Some Contemporary Bioethics Problems by
This collection of essays addresses an important cross-section of issues in contemporary bioethics. It represents an essential contribution to global bioethics anchored and grounded on a continent most remarkable for its biological, cultural and linguistic diversity. It is a fitting beginning to addressing the observable absence of African voices in the rather lively global discourses of bioethics. The issues treated here include a discussion of the fundamental principles of bioethics; the place of African thought in medical research ethics, traditional medicine, and assisted conception; the moral status of embryonic stem cells; research with vulnerable human beings; and sexual and reproductive health in Africa. It explores a paradigm of how the universal and the particular may be blended, how global bioethics can remain firmly anchored and committed locally, regionally, continentally.
Bioethics in Africa by
Bioethics urges us to question and debate fundamental moral issues that arise in health-related sciences. However, as a result of Western dominance and globalization, bioethical thinking and practice has inevitably been shaped and defined by Western theories. With recent discussions centering on the relationship between culture and bioethics, it is important to consider how and to what extent can bioethics reflect and accommodate non-Western values and beliefs? Debatably, many scholars working in the field of ‘African bioethics'seek to construct a bioethical practice that is grounded in indigenous African values. Yet, how relevant are ancient African cultural norms to the lives and realities of the 21st century Sub-Saharan-Africans?
Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India by
India is the top provider of surrogacy services in the world, with a multi-million dollar surrogacy industry that continues to grow exponentially, as increasing numbers of couples from developed nations look for wombs in which to grow their babies. Some scholars have exulted transnational surrogacy for the possibilities it opens for infertile couples, while others have offered bioethical cautionary tales, rebuked exploitative intended parents, or lamented the exploitation of surrogate mothers—but very little is known about the experience of and transaction between surrogate mothers and intended parents outside the lens of the many agencies that control surrogacy in India. Drawing from rich interviews with surrogate mothers and egg donors in Bangalore, as well as twenty straight and gay couples in the U.S. and Australia, Discounted Life focuses on the processes of social and market exchange in transnational surrogacy.
Latin American Perspectives on Scientific Research by
This collection of papers presents case studies and reflections on research bioethics from the standpoint of two Latin American academics involved in the teaching and dissemination of good practices and essential information on bioethics and various related topics. While limited in scope to a few key issues, the text may be read as an inspiration to comparative analyses of research practices involving human subjects and as an example of the reception of fundamental ideas on science and technology adopted in the Latin American region after their development in other areas of the globe.
New Perspectives in Japanese Bioethics by
Post-war Japan has seen profound and rapid social change and transformation. One of the most visible areas of change in Japan has been medicine, and particularly the ethical practices and policies that guide medical decision-making. The formal discipline of bioethics, Seimei Rinri in Japanese, has grown by leaps and bounds since the late 1970s, when it began to appear in the curriculum and professional activities of Japanese medical schools and philosophy departments. The introduction of bioethics to Japan was timely, as innovation in medicine and technology was evolving in ways that revealed that the intersection of medicine, traditional Japanese values, and new cultural trends was an area of great moral complexity.
Beyond Bioethics: Toward a New Biopolitics by
For decades, the field of bioethics has shaped the way we think about ethical problems in science, technology, and medicine. But its traditional emphasis on individual interests such as doctor-patient relationships, informed consent, and personal autonomy is minimally helpful in confronting the social and political challenges posed by new human biotechnologies such as assisted reproduction, human genetic modification, and DNA forensics. Beyond Bioethics addresses these provocative issues from an emerging standpoint that is attentive to race, gender, class, disability, privacy, and notions of democracy—a'new biopolitics.'This authoritative volume provides an overview for those grappling with the profound dilemmas posed by these developments. It brings together the work of cutting-edge thinkers from diverse fields of study and public engagement, all of them committed to this new perspective grounded in social justice and public interest values.
Beyond Consent: Seeking Justice in Research by
Patients with cancer and AIDS now clamor for access to clinical trials. Federal policies governing research that once emphasized protecting subjects from dangerous research now promote access to clinical research. Have claims about justice and access to the benefits of research eclipsed concerns about consent and protection from risks? How can we make good and fair decisions about the selection of subjects and other questions of justice in research? Beyond Consent examines the concept of justice and its application to human subject research through the different lenses of important research populations: children, the vulnerable sick, captive and convenient populations, women, people of color, and subjects in international settings. To set the stage for this examination, and introductory chapter addresses the evolution of research policies. After a look at specific subject populations, the authors discuss the concept of justice for research with human subjects in the future and analyze justice throughout the research enterprise.
Ethics Rounds: a Casebook in Pediatric Bioethics by
Pediatric Collections offers what you need to know – original, focused research in a snapshot approach.The ethical issues that arise in pediatrics vary drastically from those in other clinical settings because young children cannot make decisions for themselves. This essential collection presents a series of cases that highlight ethical dilemmas that arise in pediatrics including End-of-Life Decisions; When Doctors and Parents Have Different Philosophies; Ethical Issues in Genomics; Ethical Issues Surrounding Permanent Severe Disability in Childhood; Research Ethics; and Issues in Law and Health Policy. This collection is intended to be a starting point for a discussion on pediatric bioethics and a reference when reflecting on similar cases.
Medical Entanglements: Rethinking Feminist Debates About Healthcare by
Medical Entanglements uses intersectional feminist, queer, and crip theory to move beyond “for or against” approaches to medical intervention. Using a series of case studies – sex-confirmation surgery, pharmaceutical treatments for sexual dissatisfaction, and weight loss interventions – the book argues that, because of systemic inequality, most mainstream medical interventions will simultaneously reinforce social inequality and alleviate some individual suffering. The book demonstrates that there is no way to think ourselves out of this conundrum as the contradictions are a product of unjust systems. Thus, Gupta argues that feminist activists and theorists should allow individuals to choose whether to use a particular intervention, while directing their social justice efforts at dismantling systems of oppression and at ensuring that all people, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, class, or ability, have access to the basic resources required to flourish.
Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women by
In Reproductive Justice, sociologist Barbara Gurr provides the first analysis of Native American women's reproductive healthcare and offers a sustained consideration of the movement for reproductive justice in the United States.The book examines the reproductive healthcare experiences on Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota—where Gurr herself lived for more than a year. Gurr paints an insightful portrait of the Indian Health Service (IHS)—the federal agency tasked with providing culturally appropriate, adequate healthcare to Native Americans—shedding much-needed light on Native American women's efforts to obtain prenatal care, access to contraception, abortion services, and access to care after sexual assault. Reproductive Justice goes beyond this local story to look more broadly at how race, gender, sex, sexuality, class, and nation inform the ways in which the government understands reproductive healthcare and organizes the delivery of this care.
Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm by
Unimaginable until the twentieth century, the clinical practice of transferring eggs and sperm from body to body is now the basis of a bustling market. In Sex Cells, Rene Almeling provides an inside look at how egg agencies and sperm banks do business. Although both men and women are usually drawn to donation for financial reasons, Almeling finds that clinics encourage sperm donors to think of the payments as remuneration for an easy "job." Women receive more money but are urged to regard egg donation in feminine terms, as the ultimate "gift" from one woman to another. Sex Cells shows how the gendered framing of paid donation, as either a job or a gift, not only influences the structure of the market, but also profoundly affects the individuals whose genetic material is being purchased.