Western society today is less unified by a set of core values than ever before. Undoubtedly, the concept of moral consensus is a difficult one in a liberal, democratic and pluralistic society. But it is imperative to avoid a rigid majoritarianism where sensitive personal values are at stake, as in bioethics. Bioethics has become an influential part of public and professional discussions of health care. It has helped frame issues of moral values and medicine as part of a more general effort to find consensus about some of the most perplexing questions of our time. But why is it thought that a moral consensus is important or that it deserves respect? How does moral consensus acquire legitimacy in a society that includes diverse value systems? How is moral consensus possible and how do small groups help create or distort consensus processes? Written by a medical school professor trained in philosophy, this timely work tackles these questions from philosophical, historical, and social scientific standpoints. It begins by describing the traditional ambivalence about consensus in Western culture as well as the uncertain relationship in modernity between consensus and expertise. After outlining the current bioethical consensus, the book gives philosophical and political analyses of the idea of consensus, then assesses the role of consensus in national ethics commissions and in the ethics committee movement. Moreno constructs an original, naturalistic philosophy of moral consensus, referred to as "bioethical naturalism", and then applies sociology and social psychology to actual consensus processes. The book concludes with an account of bioethics as a consensus-oriented social reform movement. This insightful volume will be essential reading for bioethicists, philosophers, physicians, members of ethics committees, and all those concerned with ethical and social issues in health care.

Deciding Together: Bioethics and Moral Consensus

Politics & Social Sciences

Moreno, Jonathan D.

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe. The field of neuroscience has made remarkable strides in recent years in understanding aspects of the brain, yet we still struggle with seemingly fundamental questions about how the brain works. What lessons can we learn from neuroscience’s successes and failures? What kinds of questions can neuroscience answer, and what will remain out of reach? In The Brain in Context, the bioethicist Jonathan D. Moreno and the neuroscientist Jay Schulkin provide an accessible and thought-provoking account of the evolution of neuroscience and the neuroscience of evolution. They emphasize that the brain is not an isolated organ―it extends into every part of the body and every aspect of human life. Understanding the brain requires studying the environmental, biological, chemical, genetic, and social factors that continue to shape it. Moreno and Schulkin describe today’s transformative devices, theories, and methods, including technologies like fMRI and optogenetics as well as massive whole-brain activity maps and the attempt to create a digital simulation of the brain. They show how theorizing about the brain and experimenting with it often go hand in hand, and they raise cautions about unintended consequences of technological interventions. The Brain in Context is a stimulating and even-handed assessment of the scope and limits of what we know about how we think.

The Brain in Context: A Pragmatic Guide to Neuroscience

Science & Math

Schulkin, Jay

Biological Sciences

Columbia University Press

In this timely book, Jonathan D. Moreno takes up some of the most important questions in clinical ethics today. Moreno’s view is that moral values emerge out of human experience, a view that creates a compelling conceptual framework for bioethics. 
To begin, Moreno recalls his experience as a hospital ethicist and how that shaped his understanding of what bioethics is about, both as theory and practice. His focus then turns to a difficult moral paradox: the need to advance medical knowledge by using human beings in research. His account of the way American medicine has reached a strong protectionist approach to managing this paradox leads to discussions of vulnerable groups whose circumstances demand that we reflect on the way this issue should be approached in the future.
Moreno then takes up the historical and ethical role of the national security dimensions of human experimentation. His account casts a drastically different light on the origins of modern bioethics, especially on the central document of modern human experimentation, the Nuremberg Code.
In the last section, Moreno pushes the bioethics envelope in a naturalistic examination of emerging values concerning the neurosciences and bioterrorism.
Is There an Ethicist in the House? tackles difficult issues with clarity and insight. The book will be welcomed not only by medical professionals but also by lay readers who seek to understand the philosophical foundations of contemporary medical ethics.

Is There an Ethicist in the House?: On the Cutting Edge of Bioethics (Medical Ethics)

Medical Books

Medicine

Indiana University Press

Absolutely Essential: Bioethics and the Rules-Based International Order (Basic Bioethics)

The MIT Press

Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City. Case studies in clinical medical ethics, for practitioners or students. Uses a format of questions with extended discussions following each case presentation. DNLM: Ethics, Medical.

Ethics in Clinical Practice

Zuckerman, Connie

Ahronheim, Judith C., M.D.

Little,Brown & Co

In 1994, Jonathan Moreno became a senior staff member of a special commission created by President Clinton to investigate allegations of government-sponsored radiation research on unknowing citizens during the cold war. The top secret documents he helped to declassify revealed a shocking truth-- that human experimentation played an extensive role in this country's attempts to build and protect against weapons of mass destruction. In Undue Risk, Moreno presents the first comprehensive history of the use of human subjects in atomic, biological, and chemical warfare experiments from World War II to the twenty-first century. From the courtrooms of Nuremberg to the battlefields of the Gulf War, Undue Risk explores a variety of government policies and specific cases, including plutonium injections into unwitting hospital patients, U.S. government attempts to recruit Nazi medical scientists, the subjection of soldiers to atomic blast fallout, secret LSD and mescaline studies, and the feeding of irradiated oatmeal to children. It is also the first book to go behind the scenes and reveal the government's struggle with the ethics of human experimentation and the evolution of agonizing policy choices on unfamiliar moral terrain. As the threat of foreign and domestic terrorist attack continues to grow, the need for our country to defend itself against insidious weapons is greater than ever. Can a democracy justify using humans in potentially risky experiments in order to answer scientific questions vital to national security? Exploring the possibilities, Undue Risk highlights a program of human experimentation that is a moral model for all others, civilian and military.

Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans

History

Military

W.H.Freeman

An incisive examination of bioethics and American healthcare, and their profound affects on American culture over the last sixty years, from two eminent scholars. An eye-opening look at the inevitable moral choices that come along with tremendous medical progress, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die is a primer for all Americans to talk more honestly about health care. Beginning in the 1950s when doctors still paid house calls but regularly withheld the truth from their patients, Amy Gutmann and Jonathan D. Moreno explore an unprecedented revolution in health care and explain the problem with America’s wanting everything that medical science has to offer without debating its merits and its limits. The result: Americans today pay far more for health care while having among the lowest life expectancies and highest infant mortality of any affluent nation. Gutmann and Moreno―“incisive, influential, and pragmatic thinkers” (Arthur Caplan)―demonstrate that the stakes have never been higher for prolonging and improving life. From health care reform and death-with-dignity to child vaccinations and gene editing, they explain how bioethics came to dominate the national spotlight, leading and responding to a revolution in doctor-patient relations, a burgeoning world of organ transplants, and new reproductive technologies that benefit millions but create a host of legal and ethical challenges. With striking examples, the authors show how breakthroughs in cancer research, infectious disease, and drug development provide Americans with exciting new alternatives, yet often painful choices. They address head-on the most fundamental challenges in American health care: Why do we pay so much for health care while still lacking universal coverage? How can medical studies adequately protect individuals who volunteer for them? What’s fair when it comes to allocating organs for transplants in truly life-and-death situations? A lucid and provocative blend of history and public policy, this urgent work exposes the American paradox of wanting to have it all without paying the price.

Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die: Bioethics and the Transformation of Health Care in America

Gutmann, Amy

Americas

Liveright

Undue Risk

From the courtrooms of Nuremberg to the battlefields of the Gulf War, Undue Risk exposes a variety of government policies and specific cases, includingplutonium injections to unwilling hospital patients, and even the attempted recruitment of Nazi medical scientists bythe U.S. government after World War II.

Routledge

NOW FEATURING A NEW AFTERWORD, "PANDEMIC ETHICS" 
From two eminent scholars comes a provocative examination of bioethics and our culture’s obsession with having it all without paying the price. Shockingly, the United States has among the lowest life expectancies and highest infant mortality rates of any high-income nation, yet, as Amy Gutmann and Jonathan D. Moreno show, we spend twice as much per capita on medical care without insuring everyone. A “remarkable, highly readable journey” (Judy Woodruff ) sure to become a classic on bioethics, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die explores the troubling contradictions between expanding medical research and neglecting human rights, from testing anthrax vaccines on children to using brain science for marketing campaigns. Providing “a clear and compassionate presentation” (Library Journal) of such complex topics as radical changes in doctor-patient relations, legal controversies over in vitro babies, experiments on humans, unaffordable new drugs, and limited access to hospice care, this urgent and incisive history is “required reading for anyone with a heartbeat” (Andrea Mitchell).

In his fascinating new book, Jonathan D. Moreno investigates the deeply intertwined worlds of cutting-edge brain science, U.S. defense agencies, and a volatile geopolitical landscape where a nation's weaponry must go far beyond bombs and men. The first-ever exploration of the connections between national security and brain research, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense reveals how many questions crowd this gray intersection of science and government and urges us to begin to answer them. From neuropharmacology to neural imaging to brain-machine interface devices that relay images and sounds between human brains and machines, Moreno shows how national security entities seek to harness the human nervous system in a multitude of ways as a potent weapon against the enemy soldier. Moreno charts such projects as monkeys moving robotic arms with their minds, technology to read the brain’s thought patterns at a distance, the development of "anti-sleep" drugs to enhance soldiers’ battle performance and others to dampen their emotional reactions to the violence, and advances that could open the door to "neuroweapons"—virus-transported molecules to addle the brain. "As new kinds of weapons are added to the arsenal already at the disposal of fallible human leaders," Moreno writes, "we need to find new ways to address the problem"--of the ethical military application of so powerful and intimate a science. This book is the first step in confronting the quandaries inherent in this partnership of government and neuroscience, serves as a compelling wake-up call for scientists and citizens, and suggests that, with imagination, we might meet the needs of both security and civil liberty.

Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

Dana Press

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