The encounter between patient and physician may be characterized as the focus of medicine. As such, the patient-physician relationship, or more accurately the conduct of patients and physicians, has been the subject of considerable comment, inquiry, and debate throughout the centuries. The issues and concerns discussed, apart from those more specifically related to medical theory and therapy, range from matters of etiquette to profound questions of philosophical and moral interest. This di...

Bioethics is a discipline still not fully explored in spite of its rather remark able expansion and sophistication during the past two decades. The prolifer ation of courses in bioethics at educational institutions of every description gives testimony to an intense academic interest in its concerns. The media have catapulted the dilemmas of bioethics out of the laboratory and library into public view arid discussion with a steady report of the so-called 'mira cles of modern medicine' and t...

Some conferences produce proceedings, others an inspiration to labor, which finally leads to a published work. Such has been the case with regard to this volume. In 1984, the Center for Ethics, Medicine, and Public Issues held a conference with the title 'When are Competent Patients Incompetent?' with the support of the Texas Committee for the Humanities, a state-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Assistance was provided by both Baylor College of Medicine and the I...

The meaning and application of the principle of beneficence to issues in health care is rarely clear or certain. Although the principle is frequently employed to justify a variety of actions and inactions, very little has been done from a conceptual point of view to test its relevance to these behaviors or to explore its relationship to other moral principles that also might be called upon to guide or justify conduct. Perhaps more than any other, the principle of benef icence seems particu...

It may be unnecessary to some to publish a text on sexuality in 1986 since the popular press speaks of the sexual revolution as if it were over and was possibly a mistake. Some people characterize society as too sexually obsessed, and there is an undercurrent of desire for a return to a supposedly simpler and happier time when sex was not openly dis cussed, displayed, taught or even, presumedly, contemplated. Indeed, we are experiencing something of a backlash against open sexuality and se...

When confronted by the concerns of human sexual function or dys function, American medicine finds itself well impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Currently it is acceptable medical practice to treat sexual dysfunctions, disorders, or dissatisfactions that arise from psy chogenic etiologies, endocrine imbalances, neurologic defects or are side effects of necessary medication regimes. In addition, implanta tion of penile prostheses in cases of organic impotence is an increas ingly popular sur...

We who live in this post-modern late twentieth century culture are still children of dualism. For a variety of rather complex reasons we continue to split apart and treat as radical opposites body and spirit, medicine and religion, sacred and secular, private and public, love and justice, men and women. Though this is still our strong tendency, we are beginning to discover both the futility and the harm of such dualistic splitting. Peoples of many ancient cultures might smile at the belate...

Research using genetic data raises various concerns relating to privacy protection. Many of these concerns can also apply to research that uses other personal data, but not with the same implications for failure. The norms of exclusivity associated with a private life go beyond the current legal concept of personal data to include genetic data that relates to multiple identifiable individuals simultaneously and anonymous data that could be associated with any number of individuals in diffe...

Narrative medicine has emerged in response to a commodified health care system that places corporate and bureaucratic concerns over the needs of the patient. Generated from a confluence of sources including humanities and medicine, primary care medicine, narratology, and the study of doctor-patient relationships, narrative medicine is medicine practiced with the competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness. By placing events in temporal order, with beg...

A leading geneticist explores what promises to be one of the most transformative advances in health and medicine in historyAlmost every week, another exciting headline appears about new advances in the field of genetics. Genetic testing is experiencing the kind of exponential growth once seen with the birth of the Internet, while the plummeting cost of DNA sequencing makes it increasingly accessible for individuals and families.Steven Lipkin and Jon Luoma p...

The issue of physician-assisted death is now firmly on the American public agenda. Already legal in five states, it is the subject of intense public opinion battles across the country. Driven by an increasingly aging population, and a baby boom generation just starting to enter its senior years, the issue is not going to go away anytime soon. In Physician-Assisted Death, L.W. Sumner equips readers with everything they need to know to take a reasoned and informed position in this i...