The book also comes with an exhaustive array of study aids that enable the reader to monitor and enhance the learning process.

Germany since 1990 has one of the strictest human embryo protection laws, yet according to the Stem Cell Act of 2002 allows, under strict conditions, the import and use of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) for high priority research goals. The author tries to show how this is taken to be coherent by the parliamentary majority (though not necessarily by the general public) in Germany. In doing so, he firstly looks into the chronicle of the debate in Germany showing its (...) different stages since 1999, then dwells upon the relation between the law and the role of ethics in this issue, and thirdly presents the two fundamentally different positions of the German debate, that is, that the human embryo created for IVF purposes is a human being and stands from its very beginnings under the constitutional principles of respect for, and protection of, human life versus the position that before being implanted the human embryo may become a human being and therefore belongs to the human species only potentially, so that its right to life protection may be assessable over against other high priority goals, such as research aiming at possible help for patients with life-endangering diseases. In spite of the Stem Cell Act of 2002, the debate of the German general public goes on, especially due to the recent EU 6th Research Framework Program which plans to also fund hESC research. (shrink)

We are pleased to publish this WSIA edition of Trudy’s Govier’s seminal volume, Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation. Originally published in 1987 by Foris Publications, this was a pioneering work that played a major role in establishing argumentation theory as a discipline. Today, it is as relevant to the field as when it first appeared, with discussions of questions and issues that remain central to the study of argument. It has defined the main approaches to many of those issues (...) and guided the ways in which we might respond to them. From this foundation, it sets the stage for further investigations and emerging research. This is a second edition of the book that is corrected and updated by the author, with new prefaces to each chapter. (shrink)

This paper examines the logic and morality of the German Stem Cell Act of 2002. After a brief description of the law’s scope and intent, its ethical dimensions are analysed in terms of symbolic threats, indirect consequences, and the encouragement of immorality. The conclusions are twofold. For those who want to accept the law, the arguments for its rationality and morality can be sound. For others, the emphasis on the uniqueness of the German experience, the combination of absolute and qualified (...) value judgments, and the lingering questions of indirect encouragement of immoral activities will probably be too much. (shrink)

When reproductive and genetic technologies spurred an extended German policy debate, the issues at stake went beyond the technologies to include the very meaning of “ethics” and the respective roles of ethicists and of the public in thinking about ethical questions.

: In 1998, researchers discovered that embryonic stem cells could be derived from early human embryos. This discovery has raised a series of ethical and public-policy questions that are now being confronted by multiple international organizations, nations, cultures, and religious traditions. This essay surveys policies for human embryonic stem cell research in four regions of the world, reports on the recent debate at the United Nations about one type of such research, and reviews the positions that various religious traditions have (...) adopted regarding this novel type of research. In several instances the religious traditions seem to have influenced the public-policy debates. (shrink)

Mr. Wellman’s highly original contribution to the relatively new field of justification in ethics consists of characterizing the different ways in which ethical statements can be challenged and showing how each sort of challenge can be met by an appropriate response, enabling reasonable men to appropriately discuss or reflect on ethical issues. In developing his unique, systematic, methodology of ethics, Mr. Wellman has, first, rigorously reviewed and refuted the main arguments for the view of the nature of all reasoning as (...) deductive and, second, convincingly presented arguments for the existence of nondeductive evidences in ethics. Mr. Wellman’s broad definition of reasoning and his rejection of the identification of justification with reasoning reveals new dimensions of justification which will have wide implications in other areas of human speculation. (shrink)

In this article I rebut conservative objections to five phases of embryonic stem cell research. I argue that researchers using existing embryonic stem cell lines are not complicit in the past destruction of embryos because beneficiaries of immoral acts are not necessary morally tainted. Second, such researchers do not encourage the destruction of additional embryos because fertility clinics presently destroy more spare embryos than researchers need. Third, actually harvesting stem cells from slated-to-be-discarded embryos is not wrong. The embryos are not (...) sacrificed for the good of others because they would have been destroyed anyway. Fourth, harvesting stem cells from embryos that are not doomed is morally acceptable, because preserving frozen embryos is futile therapy. Finally, creating embryos solely for the sake of harvesting stem cells from them is morally acceptable because the assumption that embryos have the right to life has very counterintuitive implications. (shrink)

The past five years have brought important and rapid developments for the scientific bioethics community in Germany. Bioethics was institutionalized as an obligatory part of the undergraduate and graduate schedule in medical schools. Clinical ethics committees are spreading all over the country, and research on ethical issues of biomedicine is sponsored on a large scale, for example, by the German Ministry of Education and Research. Two main institutions, dealing with bioethics and biopolicies, were established and have worked on central bioethical (...) issues, mostly ending up with diametrically opposed recommendations: the Enquetekommission Recht und Ethik der Modernen Medizin, composed of parliamentarians of all political parties and appointed external experts, and the National Ethics Council, composed of experts, politicians, several stakeholders, and representatives of the Catholic and Protestant churches. (shrink)

Mr. Wellman’s highly original contribution to the relatively new field of justification in ethics consists of characterizing the different ways in which ethical statements can be challenged and showing how each sort of challenge can be met by an appropriate response, enabling reasonable men to appropriately discuss or reflect on ethical issues. In developing his unique, systematic, methodology of ethics, Mr. Wellman has, first, rigorously reviewed and refuted the main arguments for the view of the nature of all reasoning as (...) deductive and, second, convincingly presented arguments for the existence of nondeductive evidences in ethics. Mr. Wellman’s broad definition of reasoning and his rejection of the identification of justification with reasoning reveals new dimensions of justification which will have wide implications in other areas of human speculation. (shrink)