Society's Choices: Social and Ethical Decision Making in Biomedicine - Hardcover

Institute Of Medicine; Committee On The Social And Ethical Impacts Of Developments In Biomedicine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0309051320 ISBN 13: 9780309051323

Publisher: National Academies Press, 1995

Synopsis

Breakthroughs in biomedicine often lead to new life-giving treatments but may also raise troubling, even life-and-death, quandaries.

Society's Choices discusses ways for people to handle today's bioethics issues in the context of America's unique history and culture―and from the perspectives of various interest groups.

The book explores how Americans have grappled with specific aspects of bioethics through commission deliberations, programs by organizations, and other mechanisms and identifies criteria for evaluating the outcomes of these efforts. The committee offers recommendations on the role of government and professional societies, the function of commissions and institutional review boards, and bioethics in health professional education and research.

The volume includes a series of 12 superb background papers on public moral discourse, mechanisms for handling social and ethical dilemmas, and other specific areas of controversy by well-known experts Ronald Bayer, Martin Benjamin, Dan W. Brock, Baruch A. Brody, H. Alta Charo, Lawrence Gostin, Bradford H. Gray, Kathi E. Hanna, Elizabeth Heitman, Thomas Nagel, Steven Shapin, and Charles M. Swezey.

Table of Contents

• Front Matter
• Contents
• Executive Summary
• Part I
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Social Context of Bioethical Problem Solving
• 3. Systematic Approaches to Bioethics
• 4. The Spectrum of Societal Responses
• 5. Criteria for Success
• 6. Conclusions and Recommendations
• Part II: Commissioned Papers
• Moral Epistemology
• Public Moral Discourse
• The Value of Consensus
• Bioethics Commissions: What Can We Learn from Past Successes and Failures?
• Limiting Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment: A Comparative Analysis of the President's Commission and the New York State Task Force
• The Formulation of Health Policy by the Three Branches of Government
• The Role of Religious Participation and Religious Belief in Biomedical Decision Making
• Trust, Honesty, and the Authority of Science
• Institutional Ethics Committees: Local Perspectives on Ethical Issues in Medicine
• The Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Program of the National Center for Human Genome Research: A Missed Opportunity?
• AIDS, Ethics, and Activism: Institutional Encounters in the Epidemic's First Decade
• La Penible Valse Hesitation: Fetal Tissue Research Review and the Use of Bioethics Commissions in France and the United States
• Appendix: Past Commissions and Advisory Boards
• Index

About this title

About the Author

Ruth Ellen Bulger, Elizabeth Meyer Bobby, and Harvey V. Fineberg, Editors; Committee on the Social and Ethical Impacts of Developments in Biomedicine, Institute of Medicine

Edition details

• Publisher: National Academies Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0309051320
• ISBN 13: 9780309051323
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 560
• Editor: Fineberg Harvey V., Bobby Elizabeth Meyer, Bulger Ruth Ellen