At the onset of Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity, Leon Kass gives us a status report on where we stand today: 'Human nature itself lies on the operating table, ready for alteration, for eugenic and psychic 'enhancement,' for wholesale redesign. In leading laboratories, academic and industrial, new creators are confidently amassing their powers and quietly honing their skills. For anyone who cares about preserving our humanity, the time has...

Although Roe v. Wade identified abortion as a constitutional right 45 years ago, it still bears stigma - a proverbial scarlet A. Millions of Americans have participated in or benefited from an abortion, but few want to reveal that they have done so. Approximately one in five pregnancies in the US ends in abortion. Why is something so common, which has been legal so long, still a source of shame and secrecy? Why is it so regularly debated by politicians,...

John Harris is the Lord David Alliance Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester School of Law, joint editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, and a member of Britain's Human Genetics Commission. His many books include On Cloning and Clones, Genes, and Immortality. In Enhancing Evolution, leading bioethicist John Harris dismantles objections to genetic engineering, stem-cell research, designer babies, and cloning and makes...

Ethical issues in medicine are rarely out of the news, and provide a source of great concern for both the general public and medical practitioners alike. This "Very Short Introduction" highlights a wide range of thorny moral questions related to health care. Some of these are age old, such as euthanasia and the morality of killing, while others have arisen with recent advances in medical technology. Michael Dunn and Tony Hope explain the tools of...

Presents a collection of essays that discusses varying viewpoints on the ethical implications of biomedicine, covering such topics as physician-assisted suicide, cloning, reproductive technology, and genetic engineering.

A brief philosophical introduction to the most important ethical questions and arguments in six areas of biomedicine. The topics cover both perennial ethical issues in medicine and recent and emerging ethical issues in scientific innovation and capture the historical, contemporary and future-oriented flavour of these areas.