American law, not philosophy or medicine, is the major force shaping American bioethics. This is both because law at its best fosters individual rights, equality, and justice, and because violation of the legal duty or "standard of care" a physician owes a patient can lead to a malpractice suit. The law has therefore had two conflicting impacts on medical ethics: the positive effect of eroding paternalism and replacing it with a patient-centered ethic; and the negative effect of encouraging physicians to be more concerned with avoiding litigation than doing the "right" thing. Standard of Care explores the fundamental value conflicts confronting medicine and society by examining courtroom resolutions of real bioethical disputes, often of constitutional dimension. This case-based approach, which ranges from abortion to euthanasia, from AIDS to organ transplantation, from genetic research to the artificial heart and rationing, illuminates the value choices with which the power (and impotence) of medicine confronts us. George Annas urges health care professionals to go beyond the minimalist legal "standard of care" by promoting a vigorous, patient-centered medical ethics based on respect for human rights and responsibility to both patients and society. If modern medicine is to enhance human life, a reconceptualization of law as the beginning of ethical discourse, rather than as an instrument to end it, is essential. Such a discourse could enrich all our lives by helping us to articulate both a national and international agenda for human rights in health.

Standard of Care: The Law of American Bioethics

Engineering & Transportation

Annas, George J.

Engineering

Oxford University Press

This book is a passionate critique of the shallowness of choice rhetoric used to camouflage critical personal and public policy issues in contemporary debates in American medicine. Our public discourse on life and death, from health care to medical research, and from risky behavior to assisted suicide, is dominated by the market model of consumerism augmented by appeals to individual freedom. In fact, however, in most cases there is no real choice left for individuals to make; the important choices have been made by others, and the illusion of choice fosters complacency. Knee-jerk libertarianism leads to a superficial consumer culture and life choices valued only by their monetary value. Some Choice uses the cases of cloning, drive-through deliveries, emergency medicine, genetic privacy, human experimentation, tobacco control, and physician-assisted suicide, among others, to suggest ways in which we can break through our vapid and superficial public discourse on life and death issues and begin to engage in a public dialogue that enriches our lives and society rather than cheapens them. George Annas is one of the most widely recognized names in current bioethics debates. His goal in this new book is to help open a national and international dialogue that sees the search for universal human rights as valuable, and international cooperation to define, protect, and promote them as central to life.

Some Choice: Law, Medicine, and the Market

American law, not philosophy or medicine, is the major force shaping American bioethics. This is both because law at its best fosters individual rights, equality, and justice, and because violation of the legal duty or "standard of care" a physician owes a patient can lead to a malpractice suit. The law has therefore had two conflicting impacts on medical ethics: the positive effect of eroding paternalism and replacing it with a patient-centered ethic; and the negative effect of encouraging physicians to be more concerned with avoiding litigation than doing the "right" thing. Standard of Care explores the fundamental value conflicts confronting medicine and society by examining courtroom resolutions of real bioethical disputes, often of constitutional dimension. This case-based approach, which ranges from abortion to euthanasia, from AIDS to organ transplantation, from genetic research to the artificial heart and rationing, illuminates the value choices with which the power (and impotence) of medicine confronts us. George Annas urges health care professionals to go beyond the minimalist legal "standard of care" by promoting a vigorous, patient-centered medical ethics based on respect for human rights and responsibility to both patients and society. If modern medicine is to enhance human life, a reconceptualization of law as the beginning of ethical discourse, rather than as an instrument to end it, is essential. Such a discourse could enrich all our lives by helping us to articulate both a national and international agenda for human rights in health.

Ethics & Professional Responsibility

Bioethics was "born in the USA" and the values American bioethics embrace are based on American law, including liberty and justice. This book crosses the borders between bioethics and law, but moves beyond the domestic law/bioethics struggles for dominance by exploring attempts to articulate universal principles based on international human rights. The isolationism of bioethics in the US is not tenable in the wake of scientific triumphs like decoding the human genome, and civilizational tragedies like international terrorism. Annas argues that by crossing boundaries which have artificially separated bioethics and health law from the international human rights movement, American bioethics can be reborn as a global force for good, instead of serving mainly the purposes of U.S. academics. This thesis is explored in a variety of international contexts such as terrorism and genetic engineering, and in U.S. domestic disputes such as patient rights and market medicine. The citizens of the world have created two universal codes: science has sequenced the human genome and the United Nations has produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The challenge for American bioethics is to combine these two great codes in imaginative and constructive ways to make the world a better, and healthier, place to live.

American Bioethics: Crossing Human Rights and Health Law Boundaries

Medical Books

Medicine

Bioethics, still in its infancy, is routinely called on by the government to provide political cover for controversial public health decisions involving the life and death of Americans. Doomsday or worst-case scenarios are often at the heart of these biopolitical decisions. A central feature of science fiction, these scenarios can impart useful insights. But worst-case scenarios, like Frankenstein's monster, can also be unpredictably destructive, undermining both preparedness and the very values bioethics seeks to promote. Discovering a new flu strain, for example, leads immediately to visions of the 1918 flu pandemic, the worst in human history. Likewise, a "ticking time bomb" scenario leads to the use of the "saving lives" rationale that permits lawyers to justify it and physicians to carry it out. The worst case charge of "death panels" continues to threaten meaningful healthcare reform in the US. Fundamental change in American healthcare, Annas argues, will require fundamental change in American, including confronting our obsession with technology and our denial of death, and replacing our over-reliance on the military and market metaphors in medicine. "A combination of the ecological and rights metaphors could help us successfully navigate the waters of change." In Worst Case Bioethics, George Annas employs contemporary disputes involving death and disaster to explore the radical changes underway in public health practice, the application of constitutional law to medicine, and human rights discourse to promote human health and wellbeing. Worst-case scenarios, especially worst-case bioethics scenarios, distort debate, limit options, rationalize human rights abuses, and undermine equality and social justice. It is, nonetheless, possible to temper worst-case scenarios in ways that promote both the development of a meaningful American bioethics, and a life and liberty affirming global health and human rights movement. Written at the intersection of law, bioethics, public health, and human rights, Worst Case Bioethics will interest not only bioethicists but scholars in public health, public policy, and human rights law, as well as members of the public who want to participate in these policy debates.

Worst Case Bioethics: Death, Disaster, and Public Health

Administration & Medicine Economics

"Carefully reasoned, clearly articulated, and pulls no punches. . . Boldly tackles the most contentious issues in bioethics and public policy. . . . Worst Case Bioethics is certain to provoke strong responses across disciplines and ideologies on issues of great importance."- Mark Rothstein, Journal of Legal Medicine" Annas persuasively argues in Worst Case Bioethics that basing policy on extreme nightmare possibilities leads to a distortion of fundamental ethical principles and legal protections." - Arthur L. Caplan, The Lancet" Worst Case Bioethics offers a valuable consideration of how public health policy is sometimes shaped by fear in a counterproductive manner. The book is well-written, well-reasoned, and persuasive." - Thomas May, Science

Emerging Issues In Health And Human Rights: A Reader

Gruskin, Sofia

Grodin, Dr Michael

Marks, Stephen E.

Routledge

The Rights of Hospital Patients: The Basic Aclu Guide to a Hospital Patient's Rights

Rules & Procedures

Avon/Books

The rights of doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals: A health law primer (An American Civil Liberties Union handbook)

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Now in its third edition, The Rights of Patients offers fully documented exposition and explanation of the rights of patients from birth to death. This concise reference covers topics such as informed consent, emergency treatment, refusing treatment, human experimentation, privacy and confidentiality, patient safety, and medical malpractice. The Rights of Patients is an invaluable resource not only for patients and their families but also for physicians, hospital administrators, medical and nursing students, and other health care workers.

The Rights of Patients: The Authoritative ACLU Guide to the Rights of Patients, Third Edition (ACLU Handbook, 1)

Reference

NYU Press

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