Society's Choices : Social and Ethical Decision Making in Biomedicine

Breakthroughs in biomedicine often lead to new life-giving treatments but may also raise troubling, even life-and-death, quandaries. Society's Choices discusses ways for people to handle today's bioethics issues in the context of America's unique history and culture?and from the perspectives of various interest groups. The book explores how Americans have grappled with specific aspects of bioethics through commission deliberations, programs by organizations, and other mechanisms and identifies criteria for evaluating the outcomes of these efforts.

The committee offers recommendations on the role of government and professional societies, the function of commissions and institutional review boards, and bioethics in health professional education and research. The volume includes a series of 12 superb background papers on public moral discourse, mechanisms for handling social and ethical dilemmas, and other specific areas of controversy by well-known experts Ronald Bayer, Martin Benjamin, Dan W.

Brock, Baruch A. Brody, H. Alta Charo, Lawrence Gostin, Bradford H. Gray, Kathi E. Hanna, Elizabeth Heitman, Thomas Nagel, Steven Shapin, and Charles M.

Swezey. Table of ContentsFront MatterContentsExecutive SummaryPart I1.

Introduction2. The Social Context of Bioethical Problem Solving3. Systematic Approaches to Bioethics4. The Spectrum of Societal Responses5. Criteria for Success6. Conclusions and RecommendationsPart II: Commissioned PapersMoral EpistemologyPublic Moral DiscourseThe Value of ConsensusBioethics Commissions: What Can We Learn from Past Successes andFailures?Limiting Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment: A Comparative Analysisof the President's Commission and the New York State Task ForceThe Formulation of Health Policy by the Three Branches ofGovernmentThe Role of Religious Participation and Religious Belief inBiomedical Decision MakingTrust, Honesty, and the Authority of ScienceInstitutional Ethics Committees: Local Perspectives on EthicalIssues in MedicineThe Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Program of the NationalCenter for Human Genome Research: A Missed Opportunity?AIDS, Ethics, and Activism: Institutional Encounters in theEpidemic's First DecadeLa Penible Valse Hesitation: Fetal Tissue Research Review and theUse of Bioethics Commissions in France and the United StatesAppendix: Past Commissions and Advisory BoardsIndex