Where should physicians get their ethics? Professional codes such as the Hippocratic Oath claim moral authority for those in a particular field, yet according to medical ethicist Robert Veatch, these codes have little or nothing to do with how members of a guild should understand morality or make ethical decisions. While the Hippocratic Oath continues to be cited by a wide array of professional associations, scholars, and medical students, Veatch contends that the pledge is such an offensi...

Updated to reflect the current ethical climate, this book presents clinical practice cases in which arguments can be made for differing courses of action or in which the obligations of the professional are in conflict; the reader is asked to determine the ethically correct response to such conflicts. In this revised edition, detailed background material has been added to many of the cases to foster more well-reasoned ethical decision making. In addition, cases on sexual harassment and adve...

New technologies and medical treatments have complicated questions such as how to determine the moment when someone has died. The result is a failure to establish consensus on the definition of death and the criteria by which the moment of death is determined. This creates confusion and disagreement not only among medical, legal, and insurance professionals but also within families faced with difficult decisions concerning their loved ones.Distinguished bioethicists Robert M. Veatc...

Although the history of organ transplant has its roots in ancient Christian mythology, it is only in the past fifty years that body parts from a dead person have successfully been procured and transplanted into a living person. After fourteen years, the three main issues that Robert Veatch first outlined in his seminal study Transplantation Ethics still remain: deciding when human beings are dead; deciding when it is ethical to procure organs; and deciding how to allocate organs, once proc...

Pharmacists constantly face ethical choices -- sometimes dramatic matters of life-and-death decisions, but more often subtle, less conspicuous choices that are nonetheless important. Case Studies in Pharmacy Ethics identifies and discusses the broad range of ethics issues pharmacists confront in practice. Ranging from situations faced in direct patient care to broader issues, this book uses cases to explore topics and the ethical framework within which practitioners make decisions...

For a quarter of a century, the Council for Responsible Genetics has provided a unique historical lens into the modern history, science, ethics, and politics of genetic technologies. Since 1983 the Council has had leading scientists, activists, science writers, and public health advocates researching and reporting on a broad spectrum of issues, including genetically engineered foods, biological weapons, genetic privacy and discrimination, reproductive technologies, and human cloning.

A practical, insightful guide to the moral and ethical standards of healthcareSucceeding in the healthcare field means more than just making a diagnosis and writing a prescription. Healthcare professionals are responsible for convincing patients and their family members of the best course of action and treatments to follow, while knowing how to make the right moral and ethical choices, and so much more. Unlike daunting and expensive texts, Medical Ethics For Dummies offers...

Since the middle of the twentieth century, the development of plastics has been one of the main factors influencing the history of medicine. For example, an anaesthesiologist was formerly an expert in delivering drugs by inhalation. Today, this expert delivers drugs through plastic catheters, in particular via intravenous and epidural routes. Where obstetrics is concerned, a typical modern woman in labour is visualised as having one of her arms connected to a plastic bag through a plastic tub...

This book provides an introductory survey of various bioethical issues facing society from beginning of life issues to end of life issues, and several issues in between.

For centuries, medicine aimed to treat abnormalities. But today normality itself is open to medical modification. Equipped with a new molecular understanding of bodies and minds, and new techniques for manipulating basic life processes at the level of molecules, cells, and genes, medicine now seeks to manage human vital processes. The Politics of Life Itself offers a much-needed examination of recent developments in the life sciences and biomedicine that have led to the widespread...

With the world's population getting increasingly older, there has never been a more pressing need for the study of old age and ageing. An Introduction to Gerontology provides a wide-ranging introduction to this important topic. By assuming no prior expert knowledge and avoiding jargon, this book will guide students through all the main subjects in gerontology, covering both traditional areas, such as biological and social ageing, and more contemporary areas, such as technology, the arts an...

Over a decade ago, the field of bioethics was established in response to the increased control over the design of living organisms afforded by both medical genetics and biotechnology. Since its introduction, bioethics has become established as an academic discipline with journals and professional societies, is covered regularly in the media, and affects people everyday around the globe. In response to the increasing need for information about medical genetics and biotechnology as well as t...