The Foundations of Bioethics

This new, thoroughly recast second edition has been acclaimed as "not justanother revision" but "the most important book that has been written since thebeginning of that strange project called bioethics" (Stanley Hauerwas, DukeUniversity). Its philosophical explorations of the foundations of secularbioethics have been substantially and provocatively expanded in this edition.The book challenges the foundations of much of contemporary bioethics and healthcare policy by confronting their failure to secure the moral norms they seek toapply. The nature of health and disease, the definition of death, the moralityof abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, germlinegenetic engineering, and triage decisions as well as distributive justice inhealth care are all readdressed within an integrated reconsideration ofbioethics as a whole. New material has been added regarding social justice,health care reform and environmental ethics. The whole of bioethics isre-examined by taking seriously the difficulties of all applied ethics in theface of persistent controversies regarding the content of morality and thejustification of any particular ethic. The very possibility and meaning of asecular bioethics are re-explored.