China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Medical Ethics
Published in Howard Winet, Ethics for Bioengineering Scientists, 2021
The initiatives discussed at the start of this chapter dealt with diagnosis. The act of curing the patient is encompassed in treatment. Treatment for a disease is the most traditional function of a physician, after assisting with birth. The success of clinical science has allowed medicine to extend beyond life-saving to include treatments that improve the so-called “quality of life”. There are ethical challenges for all treatment modalities. There are also ethical challenges associated with the patient-physician relationship that relate to: patient autonomy, patient confidentiality and physician conflict of interest. A sampling is presented in Table 7.1, which is adapted from Newton (Newton 2004). The “life and death” issues have a strong bioengineering component because they all rely on some kind of technology. Accordingly, they and others such as human gene therapy, human genetic engineering, reproductive cloning, contraception and superhumans with prosthetic devices are suitable subjects for debates. Possible moral theory approaches in the debates are suggested in the table.
The Problem of Technology
Published in Cameron La Follette , Chris Maser, Sustainability and the Rights of Nature, 2017
Cameron La Follette , Chris Maser
According to cloning pioneer Dr. Tony Perry, who was part of the team to clone the first mice and pigs, the prospect was still fiction, but science was rapidly catching up to make elements of it possible. He also indicated that designer babies—genetically modified for beauty, intelligence, or to be free of disease—were no longer in H.G. Wells territory.60 Real-world human genetic engineering could no longer be considered mere science fiction.
Systemic Modelling in Bioethics
Published in The New Bioethics, 2020
Henri-Corto Stoeklé, Philippe Charlier, Marie-France Mamzer-Bruneel, Christian Hervé, Guillaume Vogt
Most human societies have undergone much greater change over the last few decades, or even years, than in the preceding millennia. This is partly due to the emergence of various phenomena in medicine and science, including cloning, gene therapy, human genetic engineering and, more recently, personalized medicine, driving revolutionary changes in society (Schuster, 2008). A ‘phenomenon’ can be defined as a recurrent or singular entity, with one or more characteristics, that is observable, representable, qualifiable and/or quantifiable in space and/or time (Lecourt, 2006).