Full Description
Long before it cured disease, medicine aimed to relieve suffering-but despite that precedence, the relief of suffering often takes a back seat in today's biomedical research and treatment. Modern bioethics, too, has been slow to come to terms with suffering. Attention to ethical quandaries has sometimes displaced attention to the experience of patients.
This book seeks to place suffering at the center of bioethical thinking once again. Among the questions its contributors explore are: What is the meaning of suffering? How does it relate to pain? If there can be pain without suffering, can there be suffering without pain? Does suffering require advanced cognitive abilities? Can animals suffer? Many believe that we have strong obligations to relieve or minimize suffering; what are the limits of these obligations? Does the relief of suffering justify the termination of a patient's life, as proponents of euthanasia maintain? What is the bearing of suffering on the cherished bioethical principle of autonomy? Can suffering impair a patient's ability to make reasoned choices? To what extent must the encounter with suffering be an important component of medical education? Do religious traditions ever move from efforts to explain and relieve suffering to positions that justify and promote it?
The aim of this book is to undertake a new foray into this "foreign territory" of suffering. With a foreword by the distinguished bioethicist Daniel Callahan, its twenty-two chapters, authored by leading scholars in science and bioethics, are organized so as to examine suffering in its biological, psychological, clinical, religious, and ethical dimensions.
Contents
Foreword - Daniel Callahan ; Suffering and Bioethics: an introduction to the volume - Ronald M. Green and Nathan J. Palpant ; Part 1: The Nature, Meaning, and Experience of Suffering ; 1. Suffering and Human Dignity - Eric Cassell ; 2. Understanding Suffering - Barry Hoffmaster, ; 3. Paying Homage to the Silence of Suffering - Susan and Gordon Marino ; 4. Suffering, and the Promise of a World without Pain - Joseph Amato ; Part 2: Suffering in Biology ; 5. Social Neuroscience Meets Philosophy: Suffering, Empathy, and Moral Cognition -Jean Decety ; 6. The Biology of Suffering - Daniel Krashin, Natalia Murinova, Catherine Q. Howe, and Jane Ballantyne ; 7. What is Suffering and What Sorts of Beings Can Suffer? - David Degrazia ; Part 3: Suffering in Policy and Law ; 8. Individual and Social Callousness Toward Human Suffering - Daniel B. Hinshaw, Peter D. Jacobson, and Marisa P. Weisel ; 9. Human Rights and the Moral Obligation to Alleviate Suffering - Roberto Andorno and Cristiana Baffone ; 10. Exploring Interactions Between Suffering and the Law - Margaret Somerville ; Part 4: Worldview Perspectives on Suffering and Medicine ; 11. Suffering: A Catholic Theological-Ethical View -Lisa Cahill ; 12. The Orthodox Christian View of Suffering - H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. ; 13. Redemptive Suffering Redeemed: A Protestant View of Suffering - Karen Lebacqz ; 14. Suffering: Reflections from the Jewish Tradition - Laurie Zoloth ; 15. Human Suffering through Illness in the Context of Islamic Bioethics - Abdulaziz Sachedina ; 16. Endure, Adapt, or Overcome? The Concept of 'Suffering' in Buddhist Bioethics - Jens Schlieter ; 17. Human Suffering and the Limits of Secular Bioethics - Mark Cherry ; Part 5: Suffering in the Ethics of Contemporary Medicine and Biotechnology ; 18. Reproductive Technology in Suffering's Shadow - Paul Lauritzen ; 19. Genomic Information and Suffering in the Genomic Era - Roberta Berry ; 20. Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis and the Prevention of Suffering - Mary Anderlik Majumder ; Part 6: Concluding Thoughts ; 21. Suffering and Ethics in an Age of Empowerment - Nathan J. Palpant ; 22. The Evil of Suffering - Ronald M. Green
