Individual Liberty and Medical Control

This work addresses the moral, social and political problems emerging from the practice of healing and caring, biomedical research and the provision of health care services. The primary aim of many professional bioethicists is, of late, to solve as efficiently as possible, the problems encountered by health care providers and scientists in clinical, laboratory and administrative settings. Seen from the viewpoint of applied philosophy however, this is a dangerous tendency if the grounds for the suggested solutions are not properly examined. Even choices which are harmless and seem to involve no immoralities can be directly hazardous if those making choices appeal to dubious ethical principles or inaccurate data. This is why the book is dedicated to the examination of the reasons that people can and should have for their health-care related decisions as well as to the formulation of good solutions to difficult problems. It covers criteria in life and death situations, voluntary euthanasia and medical paternalism, wrongful medical authoritarianism, health education, preventive medicine and the welfare of the population, AIDS, discrimination and legal restrictions, and health-care policy-making.