A Life-Centered Approach to Bioethics: Biocentric Ethics
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 2/10/2011
EAN 9780521154208, ISBN10: 0521154200
Paperback, 388 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Approaches bioethics on the basis of a conception of life and what is needed for the affirmation of its quality in the most encompassing sense. Johnson applies this conception to discussions of controversial issues in bioethics including euthanasia, abortion, cloning and genetic engineering. His emphasis is not on providing definitive solutions to all bioethical issues but on developing an approach to coping with them that can also help us deal with new issues as they emerge. The foundation of this discussion is an extensive examination of the nature of the self and its good and of various approaches to ethics. His bioethic is integrally related to his well-known work on environmental philosophy. The book also applies these principles on an individual level, offering a user-friendly discussion of how to deal with ethical slippery slopes and how and where to draw the line when dealing with difficult questions of bioethics.
Introduction
Part I. Backgrounds
2. Some background
self and reason
3. Some background
approaches to ethics
4. Some background
our good
5. Elusive lines, slippery slopes, and moral principles
Part II. Life, Death, and Bioethics
6. Being alive
7. Being healthy
8. Health and virtue
9. Death and life
10. Drawing lines with death
11. Double effect
euthanasia, and proportionality
12. Abortion
13. The gene I
the mystique
14. The gene II
manipulation
15. Ethics and biomedical research
16. Bioethics seen in an eastern light
17. Toward a wider view.