Where should physicians get their ethics? Professional codes such as the Hippocratic Oath claim moral authority for those in a particular field, yet according to medical ethicist Robert Veatch, these codes have little or nothing to do with how members of a guild should understand morality or make ethical decisions. While the Hippocratic Oath continues to be cited by a wide array of professional associations, scholars, and medical students, Veatch contends that the pledge is such an offensive code of ethics that it should be summarily excised from the profession. What, then, should serve as a basis for medical morality? Building on his recent contribution to the prestigious Gifford Lectures, Veatch challenges the presumption that professional groups have the authority to declare codes of ethics for their members. To the contrary, he contends that role-specific duties must be derived from ethical norms having their foundations outside the profession, in religious and secular convictions. Further, these ethical norms must be comprehensible to lay people and patients. Veatch argues that there are some moral norms shared by most human beings that reflect a common morality, and ultimately it is these generally agreed-upon religious and secular ways of knowing—thus far best exemplified by the 2005 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights—that should underpin the morality of all patient-professional relations in the field of medicine. Hippocratic, Religious, and Secular Medical Ethics is the magnum opus of one of the most distinguished medical ethicists of his generation.

Medicine, Ethics, Religion addresses three topics that inevitably will be confronted at some level in every human life. Academic understanding of all three fields provides background for entering the field of medicine. Understanding of Bioethics is part of every contemporary student’s higher education. The discipline is presented as an important background understanding of contemporary culture for students. This textbook is required reading for an entry-level course in bioethics or for an introductory philosophy course with a focus on medicine. It may also help readers to understand their own lives, adding e religious dimension to the practice of medicine. The doctor-patient relationship, an analysis of contemporary culture, the impact of technology on human life and the interfaces between medical practice, bioethics, and religion are core themes of this volume.

Adding African and African-American perspectives to update the 1989 edition, 43 readings (1803-1998) explore the medical ethics of major Western and Eastern religious, philosophical, and legal traditions. Several point out how the Hippocratic Oath influenced other ethics, yet conflicts with the Judeo-Christian tradition and liberal Western philosophy and law. Recent foci include patients' rights and bioethics. Veatch is with the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown U. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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Collecting a wide range of contemporary and classical essays dealing with medical ethics, this huge volu me is the finest resource available for engaging the pressin g problems posed by medical advances. '

Despite reservoirs of moral discourse about duties in religious communities, professional caregiving traditions, and philosophical perspectives, the dominant moral language in contemporary biomedical ethics is that of `rights'. Duties to Others begins to correct this imbalance in our ethical language through theoretical expositions of the ideas of duty and of the `other', and by applied exemplifications of particular duties to identified others that arise in the context of health care. A pronounced multidisciplinary orientation informs this analysis of our moral call to respond to the needs of others. The essays in this volume offer a stimulating intellectual freshness through a continual engagement of theological, professional, and philosophical understandings of the duties that arise in our relationships with others in medicine, nursing, and social contexts. Duties to Others provides provocative challenges about the terrain of our moral world for both students and professionals in biomedical ethics, medicine, philosophy, and theology.