Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics provides the first comprehensive treatment of principles and positions on questions of bioethics encountered by members, professionals, and ecclesiastical leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon). The book addresses three fundamental features of a coherent religious bioethics: precepts for practical decision-making, general ethical principles, and core religious convictions that give a distinctive motivation for personal, communal, and professional integrity. LDS ethical principles of love, hospitality to strangers, covenantal solidarity, justice, and moral agency are integrated with central topics in bioethics including abortion, genetic testing and enhancements, in vitro fertilization, medical assisted death, medicinal marijuana, neonatal intensive care, organ donation, preventive health care, universal access to care, and vaccinations. This book uses first-person experiences to give voice to the lived moral realities of Latter-day Saints as they experience difficult and wrenching ethical questions and choices as persons, family members, community members, professionals, and as citizens within the context of their distinctive faith convictions. It situates these communal conversations within the broader discourse of bioethics and thereby supports both bioethics and religious literacy. Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics also examines circumstances in which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints engages in a moral witness of its values on matters of public policy, such as legalization of physician-assisted death, of elective abortion, and of medicinal marijuana. The book concludes with a distinctive normative argument on why LDS ethical principles and practices require support of universal access to an adequate level of health care for all persons. It provides an appendix of significant LDS ecclesiastical policies on medical, health, and moral issues, making it a definitive educational and reference compilation.

"Books have their origins in conversations and seek to extend and expand those conversations over time and with different audiences. The conversations that have culminated in this book were initially stimulated through a research project at The Hastings Center on the role of religious voices in the professional fields of bioethical inquiry. Those professional conversations have continued throughout my academic career as a member of various institutional ethics committees, organizational ethics task forces, and in local, state, and national public policy settings. The professional context of bioethics conversations can sometimes miss the richness of conversations that occur in the classroom and with various communities, including family members, friends, and religious and civic communities. These conversations provide an experiential depth, a groundedness in the lives and stories of persons, which augments and corrects the professionalized perspectives. I have been particularly fortunate and appreciative of opportunities to bridge the academic and professional with the personalized and communal through conversations about the ethical commitments and moral culture cultivated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon). I was invited to develop an overview essay on "Bioethics in Mormonism" for the professional reference work, Encyclopedia of Bioethics (3rd ed., 2004), and some years later received my first invitation to make a presentation on "LDS Ethics" in an academic setting at the University of Virginia. This book is the outgrowth of these many conversations and seeks to advance my communal bridging. My aim in this book is to begin bridging these various intersections between the LDS religious community and its moral culture, the professional fields of bioethics, and practical decision-making. This work seeks to be a catalyst for expanding discourse within the interdisciplinary field of Mormon studies to include ethics and bioethics. Ethics has not been a well-developed area in Mormon studies, in contrast to studies in LDS history, theology, or literature. To remedy this oversight, I present a substantive interpretation of the sources, theological background, and moral principles of LDS ethics. The historical narratives and conceptual intertwining I offer of both bioethics and of LDS moral culture is intended to complement and expand the realm of Mormon studies. A further objective is to create opportunities for reciprocal dialogues between the bioethics community and LDS scholarship. This conversation has yet to occur within academic disciplines, professional communities, or in public policy deliberations. My exposition, analysis, and critiques will intertwine and contextualize LDS moral values and health care practices within the ethical inquiry undertaken in the broader professional scholarship of bioethics. My arguments will disclose some points of common ground as well as areas of divergence towards the end of establishing the LDS faith tradition as a community of moral discourse for the bioethics field and the healing professions (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, etc.) it informs. My claim is that given its emerging cultural prominence, LDS ethical scholarship should engage in bioethical literacy and bioethics should be LDS-literate. I am also engaged in an effort to initiate more reflective dialogues regarding LDS ethics and moral culture among LDS scholars, LDS health care professionals, and the interested general LDS reader. The focus of the book on the interrelationship of religion, ethics, medicine, and health care should present for these various audiences new opportunities for mindful reflection and creative scholarship on the ethical implications of faith commitments, the responsibilities of the healing professions, and religious dimensions of public policy and public bioethics. A religious community that is formed through narratives and practices of covenantal commitments of love of neighbor needs to have a robust discourse about its ethical character. I have understood my scholarship in biomedical ethics and in religious ethics through a linking metaphor of my moral culture, of medicine, and the law, of bearing witness. The witness offers moral realities, moral truths about the way things are, vocalizes and embodies moral experience, and prophetically critiques the hypocrisies of the powerful and their oppression of the vulnerable by offering a new story, a re-storying, of tradition and conventional practice"--

Though the current political climate might lead one to suspect that religion and medicine make for uncomfortable bedfellows, the two institutions have a long history of alliance. From religious healers and religious hospitals to religiously informed bioethics and research studies on the impact of religious and spiritual beliefs on physical and mental well-being, religion and medicine have encountered one another from antiquity through the present day. In Religion and Medicine, Dr. Jeff Levin outlines this longstanding history and the multifaceted interconnections between these two institutions. The first book to cover the full breadth of this subject, it documents religion-medicine alliances across religious traditions, throughout the world, and over the course of history. Levin summarizes a wide range of material in the most comprehensive introduction to this emerging field of scholarship to date.

Daniel Callahan's life time work in bioethics has again and again returned to the root problems of health, progress, technology, and death. How we think about each of them individually and in relation to each other will shape the way we approach and deal with the most common dilemmas of modern medicine. They are at the roots of the field.

Dealing with some of the thorniest problems in medicine, from euthanasia to the distribution of health care resources, this book introduces the reasoning we can use to approach medical ethics. Exploring how medical ethics supports health professionals' work, it also considers the impact of the media, pressure groups, and legal judgments.

"Doctors have been concerned with ethics since the earliest days of medical practice. Traditionally, medical practitioners have been expected to be motivated by a desire to help their patients. Ethical codes and systems, such as the Hippocratic Oath, have emphasised this. During the latter half of the 20th century, advances in medical science, in conjunction with social and political changes, meant that the accepted conventions of the doctor/patient relationship were increasingly being questioned. After the Nuremberg Trials, in which the crimes of Nazi doctors, among others, were exposed, it became clear that doctors cannot be assumed to be good simply by virtue of their profession. Not only this, but doctors who transgress moral boundaries can harm people in the most appalling ways"--

Spirituality and healthcare is an emerging field of research, practice and policy. Healthcare organisations and practitioners are therefore challenged to understand and address spirituality, to develop their knowledge and implement effective policy. This is the first reference text on the subject providing a comprehensive overview of key topics.