Biomedical Ethics Reviews · 1984, 1984
Biomedical Ethics Reviews Series

This is the second volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews, a series of texts designed to review and update the literature on issues of central importance in bioethics today. Five topics are dis­ cussed in the present volume. Section I, Public Policy andRe­ search with Human Subjects, reviews the history of the moral issues involved in the history of research with human subjects, and confronts most of the major legal and moral problems involving research on human subjects. Questions addressed in this section range from those concerning informed and proxy consent to those dealing with the adequacy of monitoring hu­ man research via institutional review boards (IRBs). Section II deals with a second broad topic in bioethics, The Right to Health Care in a Democratic Society. Here the concern not merely that of determining whether there is a right to is health care, but also, if there is such a right, how it ought best be understood and implemented. To answer questions such as these, we learn that one must distinguish legal from moral rights, assess the merits of various theories of rights, clarify the relationship between rights and duties, and attempt to deter­ mine a just method for the distribution of health care. Advances in medical technology often pose new legal and moral problems for legislators and health care practitioners.

Public Policy and Research with Human Subjects.- Public Policy and Human Research.- The Right to Health Care in a Democratic Society.- Utility, Natural Rights, and the Right to Health Care.- Rights to Health Care in a Democratic Society.- Genetic Screening.- Genetic Screening of Prospective Parents and of Workers: Some Scientific and Social Issues.- Current Issues in Genetic Screening.- Occupational Health.- Ethical Issues in Occupational Health.- Perspective on Ethical Issues in Occupational Health.- The Ethics of Fetal Research and Therapy.- The Ethics of Fetal Therapy.- Ethical Issues in Prenatal Therapies.