Based on an empirical study regarding ethical challenges within intercultural health care, the focus of this article is upon autonomy and disclosure, discussed in light of philosophy and anthropology. What are the consequences for patients if the patients’ right to be autonomous and to participate in treatment and care decisions by health care workers is interpreted as an obligation to participate? To force a person to make independent choices who is socio-culturally unprepared to do so, may violate his/her integrity. This (...) may in turn jeopardise the respect, integrity and human worth the principle of autonomy was meant to ensure, and if so, may damage any relationship of trust that may exist between patient and health care worker. There is necessarily a link between autonomy and disclosure. Western disclosure practices may make the relationship between patients and health care workers difficult -- even distrustful. To confront a patient with a very serious diagnosis may be seen not only as a tactless action, but also an unforgivable one. Hence, among many ethnic groups it is a family member’s duty to shield patients from bad or disquieting news, e.g., a cancer diagnosis. If a family member is used to interpret in such situations, will the information given equal the information communicated by that interpreter? Even though respect for a person’s autonomy is part of the respect for a person, one’s respect for the person in question should not depend on his/her ability or aptitude to act autonomously. (shrink)

Critics from a variety of camps have argued that bioethics has suffered an indifference to Cases have been described as thin and the selves inhabiting them hollow. This criticism has been driven at least in part by a reworked conception of the self. The rational and autonomous self that once dominated bioethics discourse has been replaced with a more self, a self embedded in stories, relationships, families, communities, cultures, and other particularitythese differences—matter. They matter because they figure importantly into our (...) ethical analyses of cases, affecting, for example, how we interact with and treat patients. And with this shift has come increasing attention to the processes of moral inquiry that enable inquirers to gather all of this moral information and find their way from complex cases to context-sensitive responses. (shrink)

Normative theories of obligation, moral and nonmoral value, and meta-ethical issues and theories are considered.

Over the course of its first seven editions, Principles of Biomedical Ethics has proved to be, globally, the most widely used, authored work in biomedical ethics. It is unique in being a book in bioethics used in numerous disciplines for purposes of instruction in bioethics. Its framework of moral principles is authoritative for many professional associations and biomedical institutions-for instruction in both clinical ethics and research ethics. It has been widely used in several disciplines for purposes of teaching in the (...) classroom, during conferences, etc. (shrink)

Few issues affecting the therapeutic professions are as much discussed and as little understood as informed consent. This book, written from the combined perspectives of a physician, a lawyer, and a social scientist, is the first reference work to provide a concise overview of informed consent with particular emphasis on the practical issues facing professionals. After introducing the ethical theories behind this principle, the authors describe the history and current status of the law, detailing all legal requirements for practitioners. They (...) consider the problems faced when these theories and laws are applied in a clinical setting, offering suggestions for simplifying the interaction between doctor and patient and for making it clinically meaningful. The stress throughout is on ways to improve practitioners' performance in meeting these ethical and legal mandates. The book will be valuable for all professionals working in areas where issues of informed consent are likely to arise, including medicine, mental health care, social work, dentistry and law. (shrink)

The principle of legal paternalism justifies state coercion to protect individuals from self-inflicted harm, or in its extreme version, to guide them, whether they like it or not, toward their own good. Parents can be expected to justify their interference in the lives of their children on the ground that “daddy knows best.” legal paternalism seems to imply that since the state often can know the interests of individual citizens better than the citizens know them themselves, it stands as a (...) permanent guardian of those interests in loco parentis. Put in this blunt way, paternalism seems a preposterous doctrine. If adults are treated as children they will come in time to be like children. Deprived of the right to choose for themselves, they will soon lose the power of rational judgment and decision. Even children, after a certain point, had better not be “treated as children,” else they will never acquire the outlook and capability of responsible adults. (shrink)

This volume reprints in a scholar's edition the first English-language texts on bioethics, John Gregory's (1724-1773) Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician and on the Method of Prosecuting Enquiries in Philosophy (London, 1770) and Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician (London, 1772). Five previously unpublished manuscripts of Gregory's lectures are also included. An introduction places Gregory's medical ethics and philosophy of medicine in their eighteenth-century contexts of Scottish Enlightenment history and culture, Baconian science and (...) philosophy of medicine, medical practice, the feminine and feminist philosophy of the Bluestocking Circle, and moral sense philosophy, particularly David Hume's concept of sympathy, and provides a bibliography of primary and secondary sources as an aid to teaching and future scholarship. The book's index provides access to Gregory's texts, by using both historical terms and current terminology of bioethics. A volume in the subseries Classics of Medical Ethics. (shrink)

Cultural difference has been largely ignored within bioethics, particularly within the end-of-life discourses and practices that have developed over the past two decades in the U.S. healthcare system. Yet how should culturebe taken into account?

"The Laws", Plato's most lengthy dialogue, has longbeen regarded as the most comprehensive explanation of the possible consequences of a practical application of his philosophy.We might expect the first question Plato ponders to be "What is Law?" Instead, the question posed is "Who is given the credit for laying down your laws?"We are privy to an interaction between a powerfulstatesman and an Athenian philosopher on theisland of Crete. We watch as a plan for a new political order is worked out (...) that embodiesmany of the issues that we still struggle withtoday, such as the status of women, the statusof homosexuals, the family, criminal law, andthe role of religion in a healthy society.We at Timeless Classic Books hope that you enjoy this ancient thought-provoking story that may change the way you think about modern day issues.(Timeless Classic Books). (shrink)