PDF-(BOOK)-Choosing Down Syndrome: Ethics and New Prenatal Testing Technologies (Basic Bioethics)

An argument that more people should have children with Down syndrome written from a prochoice disabilitypositive perspectiveThe rate at which parents choose to terminate a pregnancy when prenatal tests indicate that the fetus has Down syndrome is between 60 and 90 percent In Choosing Down Syndrome Chris Kaposy offers a carefully reasoned ethical argument in favor of choosing to have such a child Arguing from a prochoice disabilitypositive perspective Kaposy makes the case that there is a common social bias against cognitive disability that influences decisions about prenatal testing and terminating pregnancies and that more people should resist this bias by having children with Down syndromeDrawing on accounts by parents of children with Down syndrome and arguing for their objectivity Kaposy finds that these parents see themselves and their families as having benefitted from having a child with Down syndrome To counter those who might characterize these accounts as based on selfdeception or expressing adaptive preference Kaposy cites supporting evidence including divorce rates and observational studies showing that families including children with Down syndrome typically function well Himself the father of a child with Down syndrome Kaposy argues that cognitive disability associated with Down syndrome does not lead to diminished wellbeing He argues further that parental expectations are influenced by neoliberal ideologies that unduly focus on the supposed diminished economic potential of a person with Down syndromeKaposy does not advocate restricting access to abortion or prenatal testing for Down syndrome and he does not argue that it is ethically mandatory in all cases to give birth to a child with Down syndrome People should be free to make important decisions based on their values Kaposys argument shows that it may be consistent with their values to welcome a child with Down syndrome into the family. Screening & . Testing. 13 November 2014. Rels. . 300 / . Nurs. . 330. Prenatal Screening vs. Prenatal Diagnosis. Screening:. aim is to identify women who have increased risk factors (larger than the general population of pregnant women) for having a child with a congenital anomaly. Evolution of Bioethics. Dr. Richard Van West-Charles. Evolution of Bioethics. (i) Paradigm. of Traditional Medical Ethics. (ii) Biomedical Ethics. (iii)Public Health Ethics. Domain of Bioethics. Biomedical. Programme Director in . Bioethics and Medical Law. St. Mary’s University College . What is ‘Ethics’?. Ethics is ‘the study and justification of conduct’. (Fraenkel 1977) . Morality is . the . determination of fetal blood groups. Laurie Lee, MD, PhD. Blood Bank Rotation. May 2016. Tumors release cell-free DNA (. cfDNA. ) into circulation. Mandel . P, . Metais. . P. Les . acides. . nucleiques. A genetic disorder that causes delays in physical and intellectual development.. Causes of Down Syndrome. Caused by extra genetic material from chromosome 21. Prenatal Testing. Amniocentesis:. procedure in which a small sample of amniotic fluid is drawn out of the uterus through a needle inserted in the abdomen. This textbook for instruction in biomedical research ethics can also serve as a valuable reference for professionals in the field of bioethics. The 149 cases included in the book are grouped in nine chapters, each of which covers a key area of debate in the field. Some of the case studies are classics, including the famous cases of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (in which subjects with syphilis were not given treatment) and the Willowbrook hepatitis studies (in which institutionalized subjects were intentionally exposed to hepatitis). Others focus on such current issues as human embryonic stem cell research, cloning by somatic nuclear transfer, and the design and function of institutional review boards. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction that places the issues raised in context this is followed by a number of cases (each of which is no more than a few pages). Study questions meant to encourage further discussion follow each case. After an introductory discussion of the history and tenets of ethics in medical research, the book\'s chapters cover the topics of oversight and study design informed consent the selection of subjects conflicts of interest the social effects of research embryos, fetuses, and children genetic research the use of animals and authorship and publication. Following these chapters are appendixes with the texts of the Nuremburg Code and the World Declaration of Geneva, two key documents in the establishment of bioethical standards for research. Also included are a glossary, a table of cases by general category, and an alphabetical listing of cases. Human dignity has been enshrined in international agreements and national constitutions as a fundamental human right. The World Medical Association calls on physicians to respect human dignity and to discharge their duties with dignity. And yet human dignity is a term--like love, hope, and justice--that is intuitively grasped but never clearly defined. Some ethicists and bioethicists dismiss it other thinkers point to its use in the service of particular ideologies. In this book, Michael Barilan offers an urgently needed, nonideological, and thorough conceptual clarification of human dignity and human rights, relating these ideas to current issues in ethics, law, and bioethics. Combining social history, history of ideas, moral theology, applied ethics, and political theory, Barilan tells the story of human dignity as a background moral ethos to human rights. After setting the problem in its scholarly context, he offers a hermeneutics of the formative texts on Imago Dei provides a philosophical explication of the value of human dignity and of vulnerability presents a comprehensive theory of human rights from a natural, humanist perspective explores issues of moral status and examines the value of responsibility as a link between virtue ethics and human dignity and rights. Barilan accompanies his theoretical claim with numerous practical illustrations, linking his theory to such issues in bioethics as end-of-life care, cloning, abortion, torture, treatment of the mentally incapacitated, the right to health care, the human organ market, disability and notions of difference, and privacy, highlighting many relevant legal aspects in constitutional and humanitarian law. An examination of the ethical issues raised by the possibility of human life extension, including its desirability, unequal access, and the threat of overpopulation.Life extension—slowing or halting human aging—is now being taken seriously by many scientists. Although no techniques to slow human aging yet exist, researchers have successfully slowed aging in yeast, mice, and fruit flies, and have determined that humans share aging-related genes with these species. In New Methuselahs, John Davis offers a philosophical discussion of the ethical issues raised by the possibility of human life extension. Why consider these issues now, before human life extension is a reality? Davis points out that, even today, we are making policy and funding decisions about human life extension research that have ethical implications. With New Methuselahs, he provides a comprehensive guide to these issues, offering policy recommendations and a qualified defense of life extension.After an overview of the ethics and science of life extension, Davis considers such issues as the desirability of extended life whether refusing extended life is a form of suicide the Malthusian threat of overpopulation equal access to life extension and life extension and the right against harm. In the end, Davis sides neither with those who argue that there are no moral objections to life enhancement nor with those who argue that the moral objections are so strong that we should never develop it. Davis argues that life extension is, on balance, a good thing and that we should fund life extension research aggressively, and he proposes a feasible and just policy for preventing an overpopulation crisis. Modern scientific and medical advances bring new complexity and urgency to ethical issues in health care and biomedical research. This book applies the American philosophical theory of pragmatism to such bioethics. Critics of pragmatism argue that it lacks a universal moral foundation. Yet it is this very lack of a metaphysical dividing line between facts and values that makes pragmatism such a rigorous and appropriate method for solving problems in bioethics. For pragmatism, ethics is a way of satisfying the complex demands of multiple individuals and groups in a contingent and changing world. Pragmatism also demands careful attention to the ways in which scientific advances change our values and ethics. The essays in this book present different approaches to pragmatism and different ways of applying pragmatism to scientific and medical matters. They use pragmatism to guide thinking about such timely topics as stem cell research, human cloning, genetic testing, human enhancement, and care for the poor and aging. This new edition contains three new chapters, on difficulties with applying pragmatism to law and bioethics, on helping people to die, and on embryonic stem cell research. In recent years, bioethicists have worked on government commissions, on ethics committees in hospitals and nursing homes, and as bedside consultants. Because ethical knowledge is based on experience within the field rather than on universal theoretical propositions, it is open to criticism for its lack of theoretical foundation. Once in the clinic, however, ethicists noted the extent to which medical practice itself combined the certitudes of science with craft forms of knowledge. In an effort to forge a middle path between pure science and applied medical and ethical knowledge, bioethicists turned to the work of classical philosophy, especially the theme of a practical wisdom that entails a variable knowledge of particulars. In this book contemporary bioethicists and scholars of ancient philosophy explore the import of classical ethics on such pressing bioethical concerns as managed care, euthanasia, suicide, and abortion. Although the contributors write within the limits of their own disciplines, through cross references and counterarguments they engage in fruitful dialogue. The questions of whether there is a shared nature common to all human beings and, if so, what essential qualities define this nature are among the most widely discussed topics in the history of philosophy and remain the subject of perennial interest and controversy. This book offers a metaphysical investigation of the composition of the human essence-that is, with what is a human being identical or what types of parts are necessary for a human being to exist: an immaterial mind, a physical body, a functioning brain, a soul? It also considers the criterion of identity for a human being across time and change-that is, what is required for a human being to continue existing as a person despite undergoing physical and psychological changes over time? Jason Eberl\'s investigation presents and defends a theoretical perspective from the thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas. Advancing beyond descriptive historical analysis, this book places Aquinas\'s account of human nature into direct comparison with several prominent contemporary theories: substance dualism, emergentism, animalism, constitutionalism, four-dimensionalism, and embodied mind theory. There are practical implications of exploring these theories as they inform various conclusions regarding when human beings first come into existence-at conception, during gestation, or after birth-and how we ought to define death for human beings. Finally, each of these viewpoints offers a distinctive rationale as to whether, and if so how, human beings may survive death. This book\'s central argument is that the Thomistic account of human nature includes several desirable features that other theories lack and offers a cohesive portrait of one\'s continued existence from conception through life to death and beyond. Modern scientific and medical advances bring new complexity and urgency to ethical issues in health care and biomedical research. This book applies the American philosophical theory of pragmatism to such bioethics. Critics of pragmatism argue that it lacks a universal moral foundation. Yet it is this very lack of a metaphysical dividing line between facts and values that makes pragmatism such a rigorous and appropriate method for solving problems in bioethics. For pragmatism, ethics is a way of satisfying the complex demands of multiple individuals and groups in a contingent and changing world. Pragmatism also demands careful attention to the ways in which scientific advances change our values and ethics. The essays in this book present different approaches to pragmatism and different ways of applying pragmatism to scientific and medical matters. They use pragmatism to guide thinking about such timely topics as stem cell research, human cloning, genetic testing, human enhancement, and care for the poor and aging. This new edition contains three new chapters, on difficulties with applying pragmatism to law and bioethics, on helping people to die, and on embryonic stem cell research. In recent years, bioethicists have worked on government commissions, on ethics committees in hospitals and nursing homes, and as bedside consultants. Because ethical knowledge is based on experience within the field rather than on universal theoretical propositions, it is open to criticism for its lack of theoretical foundation. Once in the clinic, however, ethicists noted the extent to which medical practice itself combined the certitudes of science with craft forms of knowledge. In an effort to forge a middle path between pure science and applied medical and ethical knowledge, bioethicists turned to the work of classical philosophy, especially the theme of a practical wisdom that entails a variable knowledge of particulars. In this book contemporary bioethicists and scholars of ancient philosophy explore the import of classical ethics on such pressing bioethical concerns as managed care, euthanasia, suicide, and abortion. Although the contributors write within the limits of their own disciplines, through cross references and counterarguments they engage in fruitful dialogue. Today\'s medicine is spiritually deflated and morally adrift this book explains why and offers an ethical framework to renew and guide practitioners in fulfilling their profession to heal.What is medicine and what is it for? What does it mean to be a good doctor? Answers to these questions are essential both to the practice of medicine and to understanding the moral norms that shape that practice. The Way of Medicine articulates and defends an account of medicine and medical ethics meant to challenge the reigning provider of services model, in which clinicians eschew any claim to know what is good for a patient and instead offer an array of health care services for the sake of the patient\'s subjective well-being. Against this trend, Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen call for practitioners to recover what they call the Way of Medicine, which offers physicians both a path out of the provider of services model and also the moral resources necessary to resist the various political, institutional, and cultural forces that constantly push practitioners and patients into thinking of their relationship in terms of economic exchange.Curlin and Tollefsen offer an accessible account of the ancient ethical tradition from which contemporary medicine and bioethics has departed. Their investigation, drawing on the scholarship of Leon Kass, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John Finnis, leads them to explore the nature of medicine as a practice, health as the end of medicine, the doctor-patient relationship, the rule of double effect in medical practice, and a number of clinical ethical issues from the beginning of life to its end. In the final chapter, the authors take up debates about conscience in medicine, arguing that rather than pretending to not know what is good for patients, physicians should contend conscientiously for the patient\'s health and, in so doing, contend conscientiously for good medicine. The Way of Medicine is an intellectually serious yet accessible exploration of medical practice written for medical students, health care professionals, and students and scholars of bioethics and medical ethics.