Publisher's Synopsis
Questions concerning the role of doctors, abortion, mercy killings and genetics are troubling and highly problematic. They require a thorough examination and careful probing. This volume takes a step towards tackling them. Its design is both interdisciplinary and comparative,offerin g philosophical, legal and medical perspectives of scholars from North America, Europe and Israel who analyze how their respective countries try to cope with and find answers for pressing concerns.;The book offers an overview of some of the pressing themes in medical ethics. The essays revolve around three main themes: appropriate roles for doctors; decisions at the beginnning and end of life; and medical ethics in the age of biotechnology, covering a wide range of theoretical and practical issues concerning a variety of problems that doctors, ethicists and scientists confront time and again. They consider the philosophical difficulties inherent in the concepts of medical ethics, but, at the same time, they are not confined strictly to the philosophical realm. The essays also consider practical judicial problems arising from biotechnology. All the authors share a belief in the urgency of the need to tackle and find adequate answers for pressing concerns. They probe ways to discover how we can learn from our past to promote better, more workable medical ethics in the future.
