A Question of Choice: Bioethical Reflections on a Spiritual Response to the Technological Imperative (Routledge Revivals) - Softcover

McGrath, Pamela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1138608947 ISBN 13: 9781138608948

Publisher: Routledge, 2020

Synopsis

First published in 1997, this book contributes to our understanding of the way our society responds to issues of death and dying. The trans-disciplinary research which informs this discussion is situated in the disciplines of bioethics and palliative care. Postmodern notions of discourse and power are used to explore the organizational approach of one hospice (Karuna Hospice Service) to working with the dying. In modern, Western technological societies, biomedicine is the dominant discourse which underpins our care of the terminally ill. Bioethics has recently emerged as a discipline concerned with resolving the many ethical dilemmas arising from such a physiological, technologized approach to death. Rather than add to such studies, this research looks into the direction of alternative ways of responding to the dying in our community. KHS was chosen for this research as it presented the possibility of a holistic and spiritual alternative to the positivist, reductionist hegemony of scientific medicine. The research focus is on establishing and describing this difference, and exploring how such an organization could maintain resistance to mainstream medicine. The research findings are shared with the intent of using the material and insights gained to explore important issues presently arising in bioethics and palliative care, for example the recent critique of Principalism in bioethics and the methodological difficulties restricting research into spirituality for palliative care.

About this title

About the Author

Pamela McGrath

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1138608947
• ISBN 13: 9781138608948
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242