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Ethics in Medicine: Virtue, Vice and Medicine

ISBN: 978-0-745-62569-0

December 2005

Polity

248 pages

Description
How, in a secular world, should we resolve ethically controversial and troubling issues relating to health care? Should we, as some argue, make a clean sweep, getting rid of the Hippocratic ethic, such vestiges of it as remain? Jennifer Jackson seeks to answer these significant questions, establishing new foundations for a traditional and secular ethic which would not require a radical and problematic overhaul of the old.

These new foundations rest on familiar observations of human nature and human needs. Jackson presents morality as a loose anatomy of constituent virtues that are related in different ways to how we fare in life, and suggests that in order to address problems in medical ethics, a virtues-based approach is needed. Throughout, attention is paid to the role of philosophy in medical ethics, and how it can be used to clarify key notions and distinctions that underlie current debates and controversial issues. By reinstating such concepts as justice, cardinal virtue, and moral duty, Jackson lays the groundwork for an ethics of health care that makes headway toward resolving seeming dilemmas in medical ethics today.

This penetrating and accessible book will be invaluable to students of sociology and health care, as well as those who are interested in the ethical uncertainties faced by the medical world.

About the Author
Jennifer Jackson is Senior Lecturer in the School of Philosophy, University of Leeds.
Features

  • Clearly written, unpretentious account
  • Makes classical ethical debates relevant to contemporary health care, and understandable to today’s students
  • Uses plenty of interesting practical examples to illustrate key debates, helping to make the book seem particularly accessible.
  • Author’s ethical standpoint is explicit – other books often claim to be neutral even though they implicit forward a particular approach
  • Readily accessible to advanced health care students, as well as philosophy undergraduates.