Practical Decision Making in Health Care Ethics: Cases and Concepts

For undergraduate and graduate students, medical students, health care professionals, and hospital ethics committees and institutional review boards, Devettere (philosophy, Emmanuel College) provides a textbook on medical ethics that incorporates a decision-making approach to current topics based on personal well-being and fulfillment and the theories of Aristotle and Aquinas, with application in specific cases. This edition has been revised and updated and includes landmark cases such as Terri Schiavo and Jesse Gelsinger. It has a new chapter on the latest social and political issues in American health care (replacing the chapter on managed care) and discussion of new topics such as partial-birth abortion law, organ donation after cardiac death, new developments in artificial hearts, stem cell research, clinical trials developed by companies to market new drugs, infant euthanasia in the Netherlands, recent Vatican statements on feeding tubes, ghostwritten articles in medical journals, and controversial AIDS research in Africa. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Raymond J. Devettere is a professor of philosophy at Emmanuel College where he directs the values-based education program and serves on the institutional review board. He also teaches health care ethics at Boston College and is a member of both the ethics committee and institutional review board at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.