Bioethics: Health Care, Human Rights and the Law

This casebook begins by defining an ethical "community" and membership within that community, follows with the role of the individual, focuses then on the patient / provider relationship, and closes with bioethical choices. This structure permits arranging the usual issues in a context familiar to ethicists such as Locke and Rawls, but unusual amount bioethics casebooks. The essential premise is that humans must exist in relation to each other, and do so as biological beings. The central questions then are: how do we assert and respect ourselves as individuals and what claims do our communities have upon us?

Surprisingly, there is a large body of caselaw, much of it from the Supreme Court, dealing with these issues. That is the point of this casebook. As so, Cruzan and Griswold and Casey as well as a number of less familiar cases appear, recast for their bioethical significance. A number of new issues are also explored, such as memory and emotion and physical integrity and sexual predators.

This new edition of Bioethics: Health Care, Human Rights, and the Law includes the following coverage:

• Reproductive issues of abortion, surrogacy, and cloning;

• Identity issues of gender change, family, and same sex marriage;

• Midlife issues such as transplants and tissue donation / harvesting;

• End of life issues, including persistent vegetative states and assisted death;

• Extensive coverage of the patient / provider relationship, including informed consent, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, competence, and medical experimentation; and

• Coverage of issues such as status of nonequals (e.g., prisoners and incompetents) and the undead (e.g., anencephalics), testing, conscience and dissent, and public health matters (e.g., tobacco and alcohol) and discussion of the way society should respond.