Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Bioethics in a Liberal Society
  • Cited by 52
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
May 2011
Print publication year:
1993
Online ISBN:
9780511552120
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511552120
Subjects:
Medicine: General Interest, Medicine, Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Information

Book description

We live in a liberal, democratic, multicultural society where ideally the values of personal liberty and autonomy are paramount. In such a society the state, through the law, should not be concerned with telling people how they should live their lives. In spite of this, many of the ethical stances taken in liberal societies are paternalistic and authoritarian. This readable and balanced book is an original discussion of contemporary issues in bioethics. Max Charlesworth argues that as there can be no public consensus on a set of core values – liberal societies accept a variety of religious, non-religious, political and moral stances - there should be a plurality of ethical stances as well. On this basis he discusses issues such as the ending of human life, the new reproductive technologies and ethical distribution of limited health-care resources, particularly hospital care.

Reviews

"This book fits nicely into contemporary works that focus on ethical issues in health care, biotechnology, and medicine. What sets this one off is that its topics are discussed in the context of the current social and political context. This enhances its topical nature and provides the reader with an appropriate frame of reference." Choice

"...a lucid and instructive analysis of the concept of autonomy in medical ethics and health care. He unabashedly tackles three controversial areas: decisions at the end of life and assisted suicide, medically assisted reproduction, and the allocation of health care resources." Bruce Jennings, New England Journal of Medicine

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.