How influential has the Nazi analogy been in recent medical debates on euthanasia? Is the history of eugenics being revived in modern genetic technologies? And what does the tragic history of thalidomide and its recent reintroduction for new medical treatments tell us about how governments solve ethical dilemmas? Bioethics in Historical Perspective shows how our understanding of medical history still plays a part in clinical medicine and medical research today. With clear and balanced explanations of complex issues, this extensively documented set of case studies in biomedical ethics explores the important role played by history in thinking about modern medical practice and policy. This book provides student readers with up-to-date information about issues in bioethics, as well as a guide to the most influential ethical standpoints. New twists added to well-known stories will engage those more familiar with the challenging field of contemporary bioethics.

​The goal of this open access book is to develop an approach to clinical health care ethics that is more accessible to, and usable by, health professionals than the now-dominant approaches that focus, for example, on the application of ethical principles. The book elaborates the view that health professionals have the emotional and intellectual resources to discuss and address ethical issues in clinical health care without needing to rely on the expertise of bioethicists. The early chapters review the history of bioethics and explain how academics from outside health care came to dominate the field of health care ethics, both in professional schools and in clinical health care. The middle chapters elaborate a series of concepts, drawn from philosophy and the social sciences, that set the stage for developing a framework that builds upon the individual moral experience of health professionals, that explains the discontinuities between the demands of bioethics and the experience and perceptions of health professionals, and that enables the articulation of a full theory of clinical ethics with clinicians themselves as the foundation. Against that background, the first of three chapters on professional education presents a general framework for teaching clinical ethics; the second discusses how to integrate ethics into formal health care curricula; and the third addresses the opportunities for teaching available in clinical settings. The final chapter, "Empowering Clinicians", brings together the various dimensions of the argument and anticipates potential questions about the framework developed in earlier chapters.

Evans closely examines the history of the bioethics profession.

The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics provides the first global history of medical ethics.

The History and Bioethics of Medical Education: "You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught" continues the Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics series by exploring approaches to the teaching of bioethics from disparate disciplines, geographies, and contexts. Van Rensselaer Potter coined the phrase "Global Bioethics" to define human relationships with their contexts. This and subsequent volumes return to Potter’s founding vision from historical perspectives and asks, how did we get here from then? The patient-practitioner relationship has come to the fore in bioethics; this volume asks: is there an ideal bioethical curriculum? Are the students being carefully taught and, in turn, are they carefully learning? This volume will appeal to those working in both clinical medicine and the medical humanities, as vibrant connections are drawn between various ways of knowing.

The advances in molecular biology and genetics, medicine and neurosciences, in ethology and environmental studies have put the concept of the person firmly on the philosophical agenda. Whereas earlier times seemed to have a clear understanding about the moral implications of personhood and its boundaries, today there is little consensus on such matters. Whether a patient in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease is still a person, or whether a human embryo is already a person are highly contentious issues. This book tackles the issue of personhood and its moral implications head-on. The thirteen essays are representative of the major strands in the current bioethical debate and offer new insights into humanity's moral standing, its foundations, and its implications for social interaction. While most of the essays approach the issue by drawing on the rich intellectual tradition of the West, others offer a cross-cultural perspective and make available for ethical consideration the philosophical resources and the wisdom of the East. The contributors to this book are highly recognized philosophers, ethicists, theologians, and professionals in health care and medicine from East Asia (China, Japan), Europe, and North America. The first part of the book probes the foundations of personhood. Examining critically the main theories on personhood in contemporary philosophy, the authors offer alternatives that better respond to contemporary challenges and their implications for bioethics. The focus of the second part is firmly on the Confucian relational concept of the person and on the social constitution of personhood in traditional Japanese culture. While the essays challenge the individualistic features of personhood in the Western tradition, they lay the foundations for a richer concept that holds great promise for the resolution of moral dilemmas in modern medicine and health care. The third part of the book enters into a dialogue with the Christian tradition and draws on its spiritual heritage in the search for answers to the contemporary challenges to human dignity and value. Its focus is on the Catholic social thought and Lutheran theology. The fourth part addresses the moral status of persons in view of specific issues such as the effects of brain injury, gene therapy, and human cloning on personhood. It extends the scope of research beyond human beings and inquires also into the moral status of animals.

This book is the first in a series of planned volumes focused on preserving the character of the development of bioethics in particular cultural contexts. As the first of these volumes, Leo Pessini, Christian de Paul de Barchifontaine, and Fernando Lolas Stepke’s work has succeeded well. It has brought together accounts by sch- ars who were crucial to the emergence of bioethics in the Ibero-American cultural domain. This trail-blazing work in the history of bioethics will be of enduring s- nificance. I am deeply in their debt for having shouldered this far from easy task. Bioethics is the product of very particular socio-historical developments. Most prominent among them have been (1) the secularization of the dominant culture of North America, Western Europe, and now Central and South America as well, (2) a deflation of the status and authority of physicians as moral authorities able to guide their own profession, and (3) the salience of a post-traditional animus that gives c- tral place to persons as isolated atomic sources of moral authority. Bioethics initially took shape in North America as a post-Christian, post-professional, post-traditional social movement. This bioethics sought to establish a moral discourse for the public forum, a moral practice able to give practical guidance in hospitals and other insti- tions, and a body of undergirding and justifying theoretical reflections.