Classic Works in Medical Ethics: Core Philosophical Readings

by Pence, Gregory

• ISBN13: 9780070381155
• ISBN10: 0070381151
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-07-01
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education

Summary

After thirty years, Medical Ethics has matured to where a collection of core writings in the field is now possible. There is even a danger that some classic articles will cease to be known because they are no longer included in "issue of the moment" anthologies. This book offers classic, well-written articles that have stood the test of time and have something to teach. These are articles with good philosophical analysis dealing with important topics and making significant contributions to understanding of issues. There are no long, boring selections from government commissions or technical pieces from scientific journals. Many selections illustrate how and why philosophers contributed to the progress of medical ethics. The articles cluster around several broad philosophical questions: terminating the lives of dying patients; assisting human life to begin outside the womb; terminating the beginnings of human life; personhood and higher animals, fetuses, impaired newborns, comatose patients; individual rights against the greater social good; and allocating scarce medical resources.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Ethical Theories and Medical Ethics, Gregory Pence

PART I: ALLOWING DEATH TO OCCUR IN INCOMPETENT PATIENTS

Chapter 1. Active and Passive Euthanasia, James Rachels

Chapter 2. On Killing Patients with Kindness: An Appeal for Caution, Alan J. Weisbard and Mark Seigler

Chapter 3. The Cognitive Criterion of Humanhood, Joseph Fletcher

PART II: ALLOWING DEATH BY COMPETENT ADULTS TO OCCUR

Chapter 4. Voluntary Active Euthanasia, Dan Brock

Chapter 5. The Right to Suicide: A Psychiatrist’s View, Jerome Motto

Chapter 6. Physical-Assisted Dying: Self-Determination Run Amok, Daniel Callahan

PART III: ASSISTED REPRODUCTION: EMBRYOS

Chapter 7. The Moral Status of the Embryo, Peter Singer

Chapter 8. "Making Babies" Revisited, Leon Kass

Chapter 9. Ending Reproductive Roulette, Joseph Fletcher

PART IV: ASSISTED REPRODUCTION: SURROGATE MOTHERHOOD

Chapter 10. The Case Against Surrogate Parenting, Herbert Krimmel

Chapter 11. Surrogate Mothers: Not So Novel After All, John Roberston

PART V: ABORTION

Chapter 12. A Defense of Abortion, Judith Jarvis Thomson

Chapter 13. On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion

Chapter 14. Why Abortion is Immoral, Don Marquis

PART VI: ETHICS AND IMPERILED NEWBORNS

Chapter 15. Abortion and Infanticide, Michael Tooley

Chapter 16. Involuntary Euthanasia of Defective Newborns

PART VII: EXPERIMENTATION ON ANIMALS

Chapter 17. All Animals Are Equal, Peter Singer

PART VIII: JUST ALLOCATION OF SCARCE MEDICAL RESOURCES

Chapter 18. The Allocation of Exotic Medical Lifesaving Therapy, Nicholas Rescher

Chapter 19. Alcoholics and Liver Transplantation, Carl Cohen, Martin Benjamin et al.

Chapter 20. Rationing Failure: Ethical Lessons of Retransplantation, Peter Ubell, Robert Arnold and Arthur Caplan

PART IX: INVOLUNTARY PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT

Chapter 21. The Case for Involuntary Hospitalization of the Mentally Ill, Paul Chodoff

Chapter 22. Involuntary Mental Hospitalization: A Crime Against Humanity, Thomas Szasz

PART X: GENETIC INFORMATION AND GENETIC THERAPY

Chapter 23. Bad Axioms in Genetic Engineering, C. Keith Boone

Chapter 24. Moral Issues in Human Genetics: Counseling or Control?, Ruth Macklin

Chapter 25. Resisting Reductionism from the Human Genome Project, Robert N. Proctor

PART XI: JUSTICE, FINANCE, AND MEDICAL CARE

Chapter 26. Saint Martin of Tours in a New World of Medical Ethics, Richard D. Lamm

Chapter 27. For and Against Equal Access to Health Care, Amy Gutman

PART XII: ETHICS AND AIDS

Chapter 28. How Society Should Respond to AIDS, Richard Mohr