Synopses & Reviews
When this book first appeared in 1979, it was greeted as a landmark in its field, a successful effort to elucidate the underlying principles of medical ethics in clear, non-technical language. Rather than taking a topical approach to ethical issues, the authors systematically analyzed the principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice to provide an integrated framework through which diverse moral problems could be handled.
In this third edition, the authors provide a wealth of new material on autonomy and informed consent, virtue, privacy, supererogation, rationing, death and dying, clinical research, AIDS, and many other issues. The authors illuminate the controversies and dilemmas that plague biomedical researchers, physicians and health care professionals by analyzing moral rules, theories, and principles in relation to practical issues and cases. The text has both greater depth and a sharper clinical focus; many new cases have been added, and short case vignettes have been woven into the text. Up-to-date and complete, the book provides a systematic and comprehensive interpretation of the moral principals that apply to biomedicine and is certain to remain the standard text for medical ethics courses for years to come.
Review
"Authoritative.... Well-written and erudite.... Those who read the text...will find their time rewarded by an appreciation for two of the finer analytical minds in biomedical ethics and by knowledge of a remarkable amount of literature." The Journal of Religion
Review
"One of the most important basic texts for medical ethics.... The section of case histories has been expanded, and remains fascinatingly useful as a basis for historians." Bulletin of Medical Ethics
Review
"Required reading for anyone interested in the relationship of ethics and health care.... As the field of bioethics has evolved, so has [this book].... A more complete, more fully developed, textually richer, and more philosophically satisfying work." APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine
Synopsis
This is an extremely thorough revision of the leading textbook of bioethics. The authors have made many improvements in style, organization, argument and content. These changes reflect advances in the bioethics literature over the past five years. The most dramatic expansions of the text are in the comprehensiveness with which the authors treat different currents in ethical theory and the greater breadth and depth of their discussion of public policy and public health issues. In every chapter, readers will find new material and refinements of old discussions. This is evident in the many new sections on topics like communitarianism, ethics of care, relationship-based accounts, casuistry, case-based reasoning, principle-based common-morality theories, the justification of assistance in dying, rationing through priorities in the health care budget, and virtues in professional roles. The most extensive revisions are in chapters 1, 2 and 8.
Table of Contents
1. Morality and Ethical Theory
2. Types of Ethical Theory
3. The Principle of Respect for Autonomy
4. The Principle of Nonmaleficence
5. The Principle of Beneficence
6. The Principle of Justice
7. Professional-Patient Relationships
8. Ideals, Virtues, and Conscientiousness