Observing bioethics
By: Renée C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey ; with the assistance of Judith C. Watkins.
Contributors: Swazey, Judith P.; Watkins, Judith C.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 388
ISBN-13: 9780195365559
Subjects: Medical ethics -- United States -- History; Bioethics -- United States -- History; Bioethics -- history -- United States; History, 20th Century -- United States; Sociology -- United States
Description: Based on original primary and extensive secondary source materials, the book views bioethics as a complex phenomenon that is not only related to advances in modern biology, medicine, and biotechnology but also to the fundamental values and beliefs and larger moral and existential questions which American society has been collectively grappling in its courts, legislatures, and media. Although they center their analysis on U.S. bioethics, the authors also trace the field's international spread, including case studies of bioethics in France and Pakistan - two of the many societies in which it has developed. While recognizing the intellectual, moral and sociological importance of American bioethics, they are critical of certain of its characteristics. Concerned about their implications-especially the problems of thinking socially, culturally, and internationally that have existed since bioethics' inception; the field's "tenuous interdisciplinarity"; and the extent to which the "culture wars" on the larger American scene have recently penetrated it.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 347-371) and index.
Table of contents: title: The coming of bioethics; title: The coming of bioethicists; title: "Choices on our conscience": the inauguration of the Kennedy Institute of Education; title: "Hello, Dolly": bioethics in the media; title: Celebrating bioethics and bioethicists; title: Thinking socially and culturally in bioethics; title: Reminiscences of observing participants; title: Bioethics circles the globe; title: Bioethics in France; title: The development of bioethics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan; title: The coming of the culture wars to American bioethics.