Death is not the enemy
Article Abstract:
For the medical profession, the enemy is not death. Medical science should be fighting discomfort, disability, fear and anxiety that go with disease. Death is not unnatural, and a grotesque or ridiculously expensive existence in a fragmented state is not to be preferred to an end to life. Intense preoccupation with preserving physical life, seeing medical interventions as the forces of life arrayed against the force of evil, is not of benefit to society. It is possible to make the preservation of life one's God, a kind of idol.
Publication Name: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
Subject: Health
ISSN: 0031-5982
Year: 1997
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Response to Van Rensselaer Potter, "Getting to the year 3000: can global bioethics overcome evolution's fatal flaw?"
Article Abstract:
The call for believers in a "Global Bioethics" to counteract the instinct for short-term gains, a fatal evolutionary flaw in humans, is discussed. The proposed solution to the biologically rooted tendency to choose the good of self over the good of the species is a new community with a new set of beliefs. It is admitted that awareness of problems underlying Global Bioethics are genuine, but the proposed solution is too simplistic to adequately respond to the complexities inherent in those problems.
Publication Name: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
Subject: Health
ISSN: 0031-5982
Year: 1992
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Ethics: an American growth industry
Article Abstract:
The ethics industry has experienced a steady growth over the years that has led to a significant increase of publications on ethics and public interest in moral issues. It has also resulted in an increase in the number of institutional activities, such as the establishment of ethics centers and voluntary organizations, and enforcement of regulations requiring public interest membership. However, dogmatic certainties and a deep sense of confusion still remain on what forms an ethical issue.
Publication Name: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
Subject: Health
ISSN: 0031-5982
Year: 1998
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