[.ca] Ethical Issues In Modern Medicine (ISBN 0767420160)

Great collection of biomed ethics articles:
Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine is a fantastic way to familiarize yourself with the central and most controversial issues in the contemporary biomedical ethics. Euthanasia, abortion, genetic engineering and cloning, surrogate motherhood, procreative autonomy - all these and several other topics are featured in this book. I especially liked the fact that in the discussion of each issue both sides of the debate are equally presented, which allows one to learn the major arguments of all sides and therefore obtain a fairly objective perspective on the subject. The only problem that I had with this book was the amazingly uneven quality of the articles. Along with truly outstanding articles by brilliant philosophers, the composers of this anthology unfortunately chose to include some essays by self-proclaimed ethical experts, who are nothing but charlatans lacking the fundamental philosophical concepts and concealing this in the shroud of demagoguery. "Cloning human DNA is morally wrong because... mmm.. well, because it's unnatural" - isn't not an argument, and too many of the articles in the book resolve on this sort of "philosophy." That being said, overall this book still is a great opportunity to gain insight into the most interesting problems in today's biomedical ethics. And of course, some of the articles are simply superb - for example, Judith Thomson's article on abortion is the paradigm of everything written on the subject. Therefore, I suggest in case you want to be able to distinguish between good articles on biomed ethics and some aweful crap read Judith Thomson's Realm Of Rights. This will give you a good understanding of what constitutes a moral right, and what rights we are entitled to.

Excellent overview:
Steinbock et al present an excellent series of essays & articles that provide a quality overview of some of the key issues in bioethics. Almost all of the major figures in the field are represented and, likewise, most of the major views are as well. The majority of the essays are accessible and do not require much prior knowledge. My only complaint stems from the fact that the editors deleted the footnotes from numerous articles, severely limiting follow-up research. Oh, and PowerWeb is next to useless. All-in-all this is an excellent textbook for a general bioethics course or to gain a solid understanding of the field.