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Most books about ethics and health focus on issues arising from individual patients and their relationships with doctors and other health professionals. More and more, however, ethical issues are challenges that face entire communities, not just individual patients. This book is an edited
collection of readings that addresses these public health challenges. Many of the issues considered, such as policy for alcohol and other drugs, newly emergent epidemics, and violence prevention, are public health concerns beyond the purview of traditional bioethics. Others, such as access to health
care, managed care, reproductive technologies, and genetic testing, are covered in bioethics texts, but here they are approached from the distinct viewpoint of public health. The book makes explicit the community perspective of public health, as well as the field's emphasis on prevention. It
examines the conceptual issues raised by the public health perspective (i.e., what is meant by community, the common good, and individual autonomy) as well as the policies that can be developed when health problems are approached in population-based, preventive terms.
List of contents
- PART I: THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC HEALTH AS ETHICS
- Introduction
- 1: Geoffrey Rose, Vincente Navarro, Nancy Krieger and Sally Zierler: The Population Perspective
- PART II: PUBLIC HEALTH AS COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE
- 2: Dan Beauchamp, Michael Walzer and Jonathan Mann: Community
- 3: Dan Beauchamp, J.H. Renwick and Gerald Dworkin: Prevention and Its Limits
- PART III: MODERN CHALLENGES TO THE PUBLICS HEALTH
- 4: James F.Mosher, David H. Jernigan, Bonnie Steinbock, and L.H. Glantz: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs
- 5: William Haddon, Jr., James A. Mercy, Mark L. Rosenberg, Kenneth E. Powell, Claire V. Broome, and William L. Roper and Mark Moore: Injury and Violence
- 6: Chandler Burr, Ronald Bayer, Laurence Dupuis, Joshua Lederberg, and Paul R. Epstein: AIDS and Other Newly Emergent Diseases
- 7: Amy Gutmann, Larry Church ill, Bradford Gray, Phyllis Freeman and Anthony Robbins: Justice and Health Care
- PART IV: NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE PUBLICS HEALTH
- 8: Philip Reilly, Elizabeth Heitman, and Joel E. Cohen: Reproductive Issues
- 9: Norman Fost, Abby Lippman and Julie Gage Palmer: Genetic Screening, Testing, and Therapy
Summary
Most books about ethics and health focus on issues arising from individual patients and their relationships with doctors and other health professionals. More and more, however, the ethical issues of the future are challenges that face whole communities, not just individual patients. This book is an edited collection of readings that addresses these public health challenges. Many of the issues considered -- such as policy for alcohol and other drugs, newly emergent epidemics, and violence prevention -- are public health concerns beyond the purview of traditional bioethics. Others, such as access to health care, managed care, reproductive technologies, and genetic testing, are covered in bioethics texts, but here they are approached from the distinct viewpoint of public health. The book makes explicit the community perspective of public health, as well as the fields emphasis on prevention. It examines the conceptual issues raised by the public health perspective (i.e., what is meant by community, the common good, and individual autonomy) as well as the policies that can be developed when health problems are approached in population-based, preventive terms.
