Bioethics represents a dramatic revision of the centuries-old professional ethics that governed the behavior of physicians and their relationships with patients. This venerable ethics code was challenged in the years after World War II by the remarkable advances in the biomedical sciences and medicine that raised questions about the definition of death, the use of life-support systems, organ transplantation, and reproductive interventions. In response, philosophers and theologians, lawyers and social scientists joined together with physicians and scientists to rethink and revise (...) the old standards. Governments established commissions to recommend policies. Courts heard arguments and legislatures passed laws. This book is the first broad history of the growing field of bioethics. Covering the period 1947-1987, it examines the origin and evolution of the debates over human experimentation, genetic engineering, organ transplantation, termination of life-sustaining treatment, and new reproductive technologies. It assesses the contributions of philosophy, theology, law and the social sciences to the expanding discourse of bioethics. Written by one of the field's founders, The Birth of Bioethics is based on extensive archival research into sources that are difficult to obtain and on interviews with many of the leading figures in the moral debates in medicine. A very readable and comprehensive account of the evolution of bioethics, this book stresses the history of ideas but does not neglect the social and cultural context and the people involved. It will serve the information needs of philosophers, ethicists, social historians, and everyone interested in the origins of some of today's most hotly debated issues. (shrink)

In contemporary society nothing upsets us more than having to wait for our bodies. Our bodies serve us as we direct and when they break down we become angry that they have failed us. Christians, however, are called to be a patient people even in illness. Indeed, impatience is a sin. Learning to be patient when sick requires practicing patience while healthy. First, we must learn that our bodies are finite — they will die. Second, we must learn to live (...) with one another in patience as Christians with the love that the presence of others can and does create in us. Third, in life there is time for the acquisition of habits that come from worthy activities that require time and force us to take first one step and then another. In patience one can live with God. (shrink)

If we cross-classify the absolutist-consequentialist distinction with an intuitive-analytical one we can see that economists probably attract the hostility of those in the other three cells as a result of being analytical consequentialists, as much as because of their concern with “costs”. Suggesting that some sources of utility are to be regarded as rights cannot, says the analytical consequentialist, overcome the fact that fulfilling and respecting rights is a resource-consuming activity, one that will inevitably have consequences, in resource-constrained situations, for (...) the fulfilment of the rights of others. Within the analytical consequentialist framework QALY-type measures of health outcome have the unique advantage of allowing technical and allocative efficiency to be addressed simultaneously, while differential weighting of QALYs accruing to different groups means that efficiency and equity can be merged into the necessary single maximand. But what if such key concepts of the analytical consequentialist are not part of the discursive equipment of others? Are they to be disqualified from using them on this ground? Is it ethical for intuition to be privileged in ethical discourse, or is the analyst entitled to “equal opportunities” in the face of “analysisism”, the cognitive equivalent of “racism” and “sexism”? (shrink)