PDF-(DOWNLOAD)-What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics

One of the Wall Street Journals Top Ten Books of the YearA leading expert on public bioethics advocates for a new conception of human identity in American law and policyThe natural limits of the human body make us vulnerable and therefore dependent throughout our lives on others Yet American law and policy disregard these stubborn facts with statutes and judicial decisions that presume people to be autonomous defined by their capacity to choose As legal scholar O Carter Snead points out this individualistic ideology captures important truths about human freedom but it also means that we have no obligations to each other unless we actively voluntarily embrace them Under such circumstances the neediest must rely on charitable care When it is not forthcoming law and policy cannot adequately respondWhat It Means to Be Human makes the case for a new paradigm one that better represents the gifts and challenges of being human Inspired by the insights of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor Snead proposes a vision of human identity and flourishing that supports those who are profoundly vulnerable and dependentchildren the disabled and the elderly To show how such a vision would affect law and policy he addresses three complex issues in bioethics abortion assisted reproductive technology and endoflife decisions Avoiding typical dichotomies of conservativeversusliberal and secularversusreligious Snead recasts debates over these issues and situates them within his framework of embodiment and dependence He concludes that if the law is built on premises that reflect the fully lived reality of life it will provide support for the vulnerable including the unborn mothers families and those nearing the end of their lives In this way he argues policy can ensure that people have the care they need in order to thriveIn this provocative and consequential book Snead rethinks how the law represents human experiences so that it might govern more wisely justly and humanely. Marie Anderson , . Deputy Northern Ireland Ombudsman. Joint NIHRC and NI Ombudsman Project . Purpose to ensure compliance with Human Rights . obligations . To introduce a Human Rights based . approach . 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 . Bioethics: Legal and Clinical Case Studies is a case-based introduction to ethical issues in health care. Through seventy-eight compelling scenarios, the authors demonstrate the practical importance of ethics, showing how the concerns at issue bear on the lives of patients, health-care providers, and others. Many central topics are covered, including informed consent, medical futility, reproductive ethics, privacy, cultural competence, and clinical trials. Each chapter includes a selection of important legal cases as well as clinical case studies for critical analysis. The case studies are often presented as moral dilemmas and are conducive to rich discussion. A companion website offers a curated collection of relevant legal precedents along with additional case studies and other resources. Dr. Farhat Moazam has written a wonderful book, based on her extraordinary first-hand study.... [S]he is an exceptionally gifted and evocative writer. Her book not only has the attributes of a superb piece of intellectual work, but it has literary artistic merit. --Renee C. Fox, Annenberg Professor Emerita of the Social Sciences at the University of PennsylvaniaThis is an ethnographic study of live, related kidney donation in Pakistan, based on Farhat Moazam\'s participant-observer research conducted at a public hospital. Her narrative is both a thick description of renal transplant cases and the cultural, ethical, and family conflicts that accompany them, and an object lesson in comparative bioethics. 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. Tod Chambers suggests that literary theory is a crucial component in the complete understanding of bioethics. The Fiction of Bioethics explores the medical case study and distills the idea that bioethicists study real-life cases, while philosophers contemplate fictional accounts. Few avenues of scientific inquiry raise more thorny ethical questions than the cloning of human beings, a radical way to control our DNA. In August 2001, in conjunction with his decision to permit limited federal funding for stem-cell research, President George W. Bush created the President\'s Council on Bioethics to address the ethical ramifications of biomedical innovation. Over the past year the Council, whose members comprise an all-star team of leading scientists, doctors, ethicists, lawyers, humanists, and theologians, has discussed and debated the pros and cons of cloning, whether to produce children or to aid in scientific research. This book is its insightful and thought-provoking report. The questions the Council members confronted do not have easy answers, and they did not seek to hide their differences behind an artificial consensus. Rather, the Council decided to allow each side to make its own best case, so that the American people can think about and debate these questions, which go to the heart of what it means to be a human being. Just as the dawn of the atomic age created ethical dilemmas for the United States, cloning presents us with similar quandaries that we are sure to wrestle with for decades to come. 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. NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT--OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price while supplies lastContains a collection of essays exploring human dignity and bioethics, a concept crucial to today\'s discourse in law and ethics in general and in bioethics in particular. This publication gives some examples of how human dignity can be a difficult concept to apply in bioethical controversies, explores some of the complex roots of the modern notion of human dignity, in order to shed light on why its application to bioethics is so problematic, and suggests, tentatively, that a certain conception of human dignity—dignity understood as humanity— has an important role to play in bioethics, both now and especially in the future. Related products:Ethics and Code of Conduct resources collection can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/law...   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. In The Limits and Lies of Human Genetic Research, Jonathan Kaplan weighs in on the controversial subject of the roles genes play in determining aspects of physical and behavioral human variation. Limits and Lies makes the case that neither the information we have on genes, nor on the environment, is sufficient to explain the complex variations among humans. Bioethics: Legal and Clinical Case Studies is a case-based introduction to ethical issues in health care. Through seventy-eight compelling scenarios, the authors demonstrate the practical importance of ethics, showing how the concerns at issue bear on the lives of patients, health-care providers, and others. Many central topics are covered, including informed consent, medical futility, reproductive ethics, privacy, cultural competence, and clinical trials. Each chapter includes a selection of important legal cases as well as clinical case studies for critical analysis. The case studies are often presented as moral dilemmas and are conducive to rich discussion. A companion website offers a curated collection of relevant legal precedents along with additional case studies and other resources.