The issue of Medical Liability in Europe has been intensively discussed since a long time, and it needs revision to come to a harmonisation. In June 2008, the Council of Europe’s Public and Private Law Unit (DG-HL Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs), in co-operation with the Health and Bioethics Divisions (DGIII - Social Cohesion), has organised a 2-day interdisciplinary Conference on “The ever-growing challenge of medical liability: national and European responses”. As ...

The BookThe collection of five given papers and presentations from conferences between 2005 and 2008 are discussion papers. The perspectives of the essays are based on biomedical ethics and legal reflections. The papers were presented on important international conferences and congresses. Included are the following talks: “Biotechnology and Economy: An ethical conflict of interest?”; “Human Biobanks -- Trustees and aspects of the current German discussion”; Biobanking and genetic...

Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose thei...

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...

The Male Pill is the first book to reveal the history of hormonal contraceptives for men. Nelly Oudshoorn explains why it is that, although the technical feasibility of male contraceptives was demonstrated as early as the 1970s, there is, to date, no male pill. Ever since the idea of hormonal contraceptives for men was introduced, scientists, feminists, journalists, and pharmaceutical entrepreneurs have questioned whether men and women would accept a new male contraceptive if one ...

Regional Perspectives in Bioethics" illustrates the ways in which the national and international political landscape encompasses persons from diverse and often fragmented moral communities with widely varying moral intuitions, premises, evaluations and commitments.

As eugenics is defined, it is very difficult to make a clear distinction between science (medicine, genetic engineering) and eugenics as a included field. And to set a line over which genetic engineering should not go further, according to moral, legal and religious norms. If we accept the help of genetics in finding ways to fight cancer, diabetes, or HIV, we also accept positive eugenics as they are defined now. And if we accept genetic screening, and interventions on the unborn baby, or ...

The biography of a multifaceted technological object, the IUD, illuminates how political contexts shaped contraceptive development, marketing, use, and users.The intrauterine device (IUD) is used by 150 million women around the world. It is the second most prevalent method of female fertility control in the global South and the third most prevalent in the global North. Over its five decades of use, the IUD has been viewed both as a means for women's reproductive au...

Recent scandals and controversies, such as data fabrication in federally funded science, data manipulation and distortion in private industry, and human embryonic stem cell research, illustrate the importance of ethics in science. Responsible Conduct of Research, now in a completely updated second edition, provides an introduction to the social, ethical, and legal issues facing scientists today.

This collection of essays contains leading research in maternity care from Europe, the United States and Canada to discuss systems of care for pregnancy and childbirth. Birth By Design focuses on the practical side of 'good' social science research. This is a ground-breaking work that looks not only at maternity, but also the act of childbirth.

With a focus on nine different national contexts, this book explores contemporary family diversity. With attention to the different welfare states and cultures of care in each setting, it problematizes the pre-eminence of research and policy centered on heteronormative families, showing the extent to which family diversity exists cross-nationally in relation to different gendered and "family-friendly" policies. Considering variations in family forms, including differences in the number and...