Readings in Health Care Ethics provides a wide-ranging selection of important and engaging contributions to the field of health care ethics.  Designed as a course text for undergraduate use, the anthology includes fifty-six selections grouped into ten sections.  Included are a wide range of the most important essays both on long standing issues in biomedical ethics (such as consent, euthanasia, and research involving human subjects); and on issues that have particularly come to the fore in recent years, such as the allocation of scarce medical resources, and genetic alteration.

An extensive introduction provides a accessible general overview of ethical theory for those without previous familiarity with philosophical concepts.

Special Combined Price: Please note that a special discounted price is available when this book is ordered shrinkwrapped together with either Well and Good or Concepts and Cases in Nursing Ethics. Please contact Customer Service for more information at customerservice@broadviewpress.com. 

Elisabeth Boetzkes and Wilfrid J. Waluchow are both professors in the Department of Philosophy at McMaster University. Wilfrid J. Waluchow is also the author (with John Thomas) of Well and Good: A Case Study Approach to Biomedical Ethics (Broadview 3/e, 1998), and of Inclusive Legal Positivism (Oxford University Press, 1994).

Table of Contents: [Back to Top]

Chapter 1: Introduction
Ethical Resources for Decision-Making

Chapter 2: Relationships in Health Care

1. E. Emmanuel & L. Emmanuel, “Four Models of the Physician-Patient Relationship”
2. E. Pellegrino, “The Virtuous Physician”
3. N. Jecker & D. Self, “Separating Care and Cure: An Analysis of Historical and Contemporary Images of Nursing and Medicine”
4. S. Sherwin, “A Relational Approach to Autonomy in Health Care”
5. N. Jecker, J. Carrese, R. Pearlman, “Caring for Patients in Cross-Cultural Settings”
6. E. Boetzkes, “Integrity in Cross-Cultural Clinical Encounters”
7. J.  Hardwig, “What About the Family?”
8. Norberg v Weinberg
9. Reibl v Hughes

Chapter 3: Consent

10. B. Freedman, “A Moral Theory of Consent”
11. F. Drane, “Competency to Give an Informed Consent”
12. J. Thomas, “The Physician as Therapist and Researcher”
13. E. Kluge, “After ‘Eve’: Whither Proxy Decision-Making?”
14. B. Brown, “Proxy Consent for Research on the Incompetent Elderly”
15. C. Harrison, N. Kenny, M. Sidarous, M. Rowell, “ Bioethics for Clinicians: Involving Children in Medical Decisions”

Chapter 4: Reproduction

16. J. Robertson , “Class, Feminist and Communitarian Critiques of Procreative Liberty”
17. C. Overall, “Reflections on Reproductive Rights in Canada”
18. S. Sherwin, “Feminist Ethics and In Vitro Fertilization”
19. C. Cohen, “Give Me Children or I Shall Die”
20. B. Berg, “Listening to the Voices of the Infertile”
21. B. Baker, "A Case for Permitting Altruistic Surrogacy"

Chapter 5: Fetal Rights?

22. D. Marquis, “Why Abortion is Immoral”
23. W. Sumner, “A Third Way”
24. M. Warren, “The Moral Significance of Birth”
25. S. Sherwin, “Abortion Through a Feminist Ethics Lense”
26. T. Murray, “Moral Obligations to the Not-Yet Born”

Chapter 6: Screening and the Treatment of “Disabled” Newborns

27. Lippman, “Prenatal Diagnosis”
28. L. Purdy, “Loving Future People”
29. M. Mahowald,, “Decisions Regarding Disabled Newborns”
30. H. Holmes, “Choosing Children’s Sex: Challenges to Feminist Ethics”

Chapter 7: Death, Dying and Euthanasia

31. M. Battin, “Euthanasia: The Fundamental Issues”
32. D. Callahan, “When Self-Determination Runs Amok”
33. J. Keown,” Voluntary Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide”
34. S. Wolf, “Gender, Feminism and Death”
35. T. Tomlinson & D. Czlonka, “Fertility and Hospital Policy”

Chapter 8: Research Involving Human Subjects

36. F. Baylis, J. Downey, S. Sherwin, “Reframing Research Involving Humans”
37. F. Annas, “Baby Fae: The “Anything Goes’ School of Human Experimentation”
38. R. Ratzen, “Being Old Makes You Different”
39. U. Shulkenk, E. Stein, J. Kerin, W. Byrne, “The Ethics of Genetic Research on Sexual Orientation”
40. Helsinki Guidelines
41. Tri-Council Guidelines

Chapter 9: Scarce Medical Resources

42. B. Freedman & F. Baylis, “Purpose and Function in Government Funded Health Coverage”
43. G. Annas, “The Prostitute, the Playboy and the Poet”
44. L. Webber, “IVF and the Just Use of Health Care Resources”
45. M. Stingl, “Equality and Efficiency as Basic Social Values,”
46. N. Daniels, “Four Unsolved Rationing Problems,”

Chapter 10: Acquiring and Distributing Bodily Parts

47. J. Arras & S. Shinnar, “Anancephalic Newborns as Organ Donors
48. R. Jarvis, “Join the Club: A Models Proposal to Increase Availability of Organ Donors”
49. R. Gillon”, On Giving Preference to Prior Volunteers When Allocating Organs for Transplantation”
50. M. Mahowald, “As If There Were Fetuses Without Women: A Remedial Essay”
51. A. Caplan, “Requests, Gifts and Obligations: The Ethics of Organ Procurement”
52. R. Truog, “Is It Time to Abandon Brain Death?”

Chapter 11: Genetics

53. L. Silver, “Cloning, Ethics and Religion”
54. R. Munson and L. Davis, “Germ-Line Therapy and the Medical Imperative”
55. The Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, American Medical Association, “Multiplex Genetic Testing”
56. Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, “Germ-Line Genetic Alteration

Acknowledgements