Human cloning is a main focus of current bioethical discussion. Involving the self-understanding of the human species, it has become one of the most debated topics in biomedical ethics, not only on the national, but also on the international level. This book brings together articles by bioethicists from several countries who address questions of human cloning within the context of different cultural, religious and regional settings against the background of globalizing biotechnology. It explores on a cross-cultural level the problems and opportunities of global bioethics.
This open access book addresses a variety of issues relating to bioethics, in order to initiate cross-cultural dialogue. Beginning with the history, it introduces various views on bioethics, based on specific experiences from Japan. It describes how Japan has been confronted with Western bioethics and the ethical issues new to this modern age, and how it has found its foothold as it decides where it stands on these issues. In the last chapter, the author proposes discarding the overarching term ‘Global Bioethics’ in favor of the new term, ‘Bioethics Across the Globe (BAG)’, which carries a more universal connotation. This book serves as an excellent tool to help readers understand a different culture and to initiate deep and genuine global dialogue that incorporates local and global thinking on bioethics. Bioethics Across the Globe is a valuable resource for researchers in the field of bioethics/medical ethics interested in adopting cross-cultural approaches, as well as graduate and undergraduate students of healthcare and philosophy.
This book focuses on ethical issues faced by a variety of healthcare practitioners across the Anglophone African continent. This important resource contains in-depth discussions of the most salient current ethical issues by experts in various healthcare fields. Each profession is described from both an African and a South African perspective, and thus contributes to dialogue and critical thinking around African ethics and decision-making. In this way the book provides readers with an understanding of the ethical issues at hand in various professions, including the practical implications of the ethical issues and how to address those effectively. This is a beneficial resource for all those involved in the various healthcare professions addressed in this book, including undergraduate students, lecturers, researchers and practitioners across the continent. Simply put, with the dynamic changes and challenges in healthcare across the globe and in Africa, this is an indispensable resource for healthcare practitioners.
The ethical issues we face in health care, justice, and human rights extend beyond national boundaries—they are global and cross-cultural in scope. Editors Wanda Teays and Alison Dundes Renteln have assembled the works of a diverse interdisciplinary and international team of bioethics experts into a comprehensive, innovative, and accessible resource. Following a consideration of theoretical frameworks that inform a global bioethics, units on human rights, life and death, and public health form an in-depth look at contemporary issues in the field. Each unit includes cutting edge analyses and thought-provoking case studies, as well as discussion prompts. Topics range from torture and lethal injection to euthanasia, abortion, medical tourism, vulnerable human subjects, to health equity, vaccination programs, mental health, the ethics of surrogacy, and more. The second edition includes new essays on • bioethics and environmental ethics • medical tourism • torture and solitary confinement • institutional review boards • pediatric genomics • the abortion debate • the ethics of surrogacy • issues in global health ethics • revirgination surgery • global mental health • feminist perspectives on global aging • ethical considerations for vaccination programs
The contributions to this volume grew out of papers presented at an international conference Individual, Community & Society: Bioethics in the Third Millennium, held in Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, between 25-28 May 1999. The conference was organized by the Centre for Comparative Public Management and Social Policy, and Ethics in Contemporary China Research Group, in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. The conference brought together scholars from east and west to investigate the challenges to caring and to traditional moral authorities that would confront bioethics in the third millennium. They explored the implications of moral loss and moral diversity in post-traditional and post-modern societies, and how these would shape the character of medical care and bioethics discourse in the new era. A proceedings volume under the same title of Individual, Community & Society: Bioethics in the Third Millennium, was published in May 1999 for the conference meeting.
Globalizing Feminist Bioethics is a collection of new essays on the topic of international bioethics that developed out of the Third World Congress of the International Association of Bioethics in 1996. Rosemarie Tong is the primary editor of this collection, in which she, Gwen Anderson, and Aida Santos look at such international issues as female genital cutting, fatal daughter syndrome, use of reproductive technologies, male responsibility, pediatrics, breast cancer, pregnancy, and drug testing.
This book explores the challenges of informed consent in medical intervention and research ethics, considering the global reality of multiculturalism and religious diversity. Even though informed consent is a gold standard in research ethics, its theoretical foundation is based on the conception of individual subjects making autonomous decisions. There is a need to reconsider autonomy as relational—where family members, community and religious leaders can play an important part in the consent process. The volume re-evaluates informed consent in multicultural contexts and features perspectives from Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It is valuable reading for scholars interested in bioethics, healthcare ethics, research ethics, comparative religions, theology, human rights, law and sociology.
This collection of essays addresses an important cross-section of issues in contemporary bioethics. It represents an essential contribution to global bioethics anchored and grounded on a continent most remarkable for its biological, cultural and linguistic diversity. It is a fitting beginning to addressing the observable absence of African voices in the rather lively global discourses of bioethics. The issues treated here include a discussion of the fundamental principles of bioethics; the place of African thought in medical research ethics, traditional medicine, and assisted conception; the moral status of embryonic stem cells; research with vulnerable human beings; and sexual and reproductive health in Africa. It explores a paradigm of how the universal and the particular may be blended, how global bioethics can remain firmly anchored and committed locally, regionally, continentally.
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.
The ethical theories employed in health care today assume, in the main, a modern Western philosophical framework. Yet the diversity of cultural and religious assumptions regarding human nature, health and illness, life and death, and the status of the individual suggest that a cross-cultural study of health care ethics is needed. A Cross-Cultural Dialogue on Health Care Ethics provides this study. It shows that ethical questions can be resolved by examining the ethical principles present in each culture, critically assessing each value, and identifying common values found within all traditions, It encourages the development of global awareness and sensitivity to and respect for the diversity of peoples and their values and will advance understanding as well as help to foster a greater balance and a fuller truth in consideration of the human condition and what makes for health and wholeness.
