This book critically analyses the basic questions regarding the principle of beneficence within its moral domain, to suggest and work out a more credible form of Principle of Beneficence. The Moral Quest for a More Credible Principle of Beneficence evolves from the common goodness of the three major confronting theories of ethics, i.e., Utilitarianism, Deontology, and Virtue Ethics. After analysing and exploring the common ground of the three views, the aim is to prescribe a more convincing form of the principle of beneficence. The book starts with a brief discussion of the principle of beneficence and then critically analyses previous views related to the principle of beneficence, virtue of benevolence, and their relationship, and proposes a more credible form of the Principle of Beneficence. The Moral Quest for a More Credible Principle of Beneficence aims to provide a significant contribution towards the theory of beneficence.

Edited by four leading members of the new generation of medical and healthcare ethicists working in the UK, respected worldwide for their work in medical ethics, Principles of Health Care Ethics, Second Edition is a standard resource for students, professionals, and academics wishing to understand current and future issues in healthcare ethics. With a distinguished international panel of contributors working at the leading edge of academia, this volume presents a comprehensive guide to the field, with state of the art introductions to the wide range of topics in modern healthcare ethics, from consent to human rights, from utilitarianism to feminism, from the doctor-patient relationship to xenotransplantation. This volume is the Second Edition of the highly successful work edited by Professor Raanan Gillon, Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics at Imperial College London and former editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, the leading journal in this field. Developments from the First Edition include: The focus on ‘Four Principles Method’ is relaxed to cover more different methods in health care ethics. More material on new medical technologies is included, the coverage of issues on the doctor/patient relationship is expanded, and material on ethics and public health is brought together into a new section.

Autonomous cars, drones, and electronic surveillance systems are examples of technologies that raise serious ethical issues. In this analytic investigation, Martin Peterson articulates and defends five moral principles for addressing ethical issues related to new and existing technologies: the cost-benefit principle, the precautionary principle, the sustainability principle, the autonomy principle, and the fairness principle. It is primarily the method developed by Peterson for articulating and analyzing the five principles that is novel. He argues that geometric concepts such as points, lines, and planes can be put to work for clarifying the structure and scope of these and other moral principles. This geometric account is based on the Aristotelian dictum that like cases should be treated alike, meaning that the degree of similarity between different cases can be represented as a distance in moral space. The more similar a pair of cases are from a moral point of view, the closer is their location in moral space. A case that lies closer in moral space to a paradigm case for some principle p than to any paradigm for any other principle should be analyzed by applying principle p. The book also presents empirical results from a series of experimental studies in which experts (philosophers) and laypeople (engineering students) have been asked to apply the geometric method to fifteen real-world cases. The empirical findings indicate that experts and laypeople do in fact apply geometrically construed moral principles in roughly, but not exactly, the manner advocates of the geometric method believe they ought to be applied.

Ethical Considerations for Research on Housing-Related Health Hazards Involving Children explores the ethical issues posed when conducting research designed to identify, understand, or ameliorate housing-related health hazards among children. Such research involves children as subjects and is conducted in the home and in communities. It is often conducted with children in low-income families given the disproportionate prevalence of housing-related conditions such as lead poisoning, asthma, and fatal injuries among these children. This book emphasizes five key elements to address the particular ethical concerns raised by these characteristics: involving the affected community in the research and responding to their concerns; ensuring that parents understand the essential elements of the research; adopting uniform federal guidelines for such research by all sponsors (Subpart D of 45 CFR 46); providing guidance on key terms in the regulations; and viewing research oversight as a system with important roles for researchers, IRBs and their research institutions, sponsors and regulators of research, and the community.

Scientific research ethics vary by discipline and by country, and this analysis sought to understand those variations. The authors reviewed literature and conducted interviews to provide researchers, government officials, and others who create, modify, and enforce ethics in scientific research around the world with an understanding of how ethics are created, monitored, and enforced across scientific disciplines and across international borders.