科学技術の発達は、中絶や安楽死など、従来は存在しなかった倫理的な問題を生じさせるようになりました。私たちの誰もが当事者として判断を迫られる可能性のある医療倫理の諸問題を取り上げ、その考え方を整理します。メディアでの議論や政策、推進派と圧力団体、最近の判例にも言及しながら、医療倫理を取り巻く現状に広く目配りします。倫理的根拠を明確にしていくプロセスとそのためのツール、増加する臨床現場での倫理コンサルテーションなども紹介しています。(cf. Medical Law, #345)
   

• Covers a wide range of the contemporary issues in medical ethics
• Explains the 'tools' of ethical reasoning
• Discusses the social uses and abuses of medical ethics worldwide
• Shows how medical ethics supports health professionals in their decision-making
• Considers the impact of pressure groups, activism, and the media on the ethical issues at the heart of medicine

 
The issue of medical ethics, from thorny moral questions such as euthanasia and the morality of killing to political questions such as the fair distribution of health care resources, is rarely out of today's media. This area of ethics covers a wide range of issues, from mental health to reproductive medicine, as well as including management issues such as resource allocation, and has proven to hold enduring interest for the general public as well as the medical practitioner. This Very Short Introduction provides an invaluable tool with which to think about the ethical values that lie at the heart of medicine. 

This new edition explores the ethical reasoning we can use to approach medical ethics, introducing the most important 'tools' of ethical reasoning, and discussing how argument, thought experiments, and intuition can be combined in the consideration of medical ethics. Considering its practical application, Tony Hope and Michael Dunn explore how medical ethics supports health professionals through the growing use of ethics expertise in clinical settings. They also contemplate the increasingly important place of medical ethics in the wider social context, particularly in this age of globalization, not only in healthcare practice, but also policy, discussions in the media, pressure group and activism settings, and in legal judgments.