Showing titles in Medical Ethics

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than 20 years after her death, with devastating consequences....

Dr. Tom Harbin outlines the many reasons medical professionals should pay more attention to the easily-forgotten principles of ethics. This audiobook discusses ethical issues of day-to-day importance, such as prescribing medications, recommending surgery, adopting new procedures, communicating with patients and colleagues, dealing with personal problems such as substance abuse, disruptive behavior, and boundary issues, and managing personal and institutional obstacles to ethics.

Making ethical decisions involves more than listening to an inner moral compass, a feeling in the gut of what’s right and wrong. Questions of ethics in science are becoming increasingly complex, especially as technology encroaches upon even our most private cellular spaces. In Doing the Right Thing: Ethics in Science, we cover a wide range of areas in science and medicine where complicated ethical questions come to bear, including genomics and research where informed - and ethically sound - choices are the basis of many scientific studies.

In Kidney to Share, Martha Gershun tells the story of her decision to donate a kidney to a stranger. She takes listeners through the complex process by which such donors are vetted to ensure that they are physically and psychologically fit to take the risk of a major operation. Gershun and Lantos analyze the differences that arise depending on whether the organ comes from a living donor or one who has died. They observe the expertise and the shortcomings of doctors, nurses, and other professionals and describe the burdens that we place on people who are willing to donate.

Sick Business is a clarion call for reform and change. A gripping expose, in the end the book equips you with some real answers and the tough questions you need to ask when your family's health—and perhaps your own—is at stake.

At seven months pregnant, intensive care doctor Rana Awdish suffered a catastrophic medical event, haemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. She spent months fighting for her life in her own hospital, enduring a series of organ failures and multiple major surgeries. Every step of the way, Awdish was faced with something even more unexpected and shocking than her battle to survive: her fellow doctors’ inability to see and acknowledge the pain of loss and human suffering, the result of a self-protective barrier hardwired in medical training.

Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical frontline. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Prompted by his retirement from his full-time job in the NHS, and through his continuing work in Nepal and Ukraine, Henry has been forced to reflect more deeply about what 40 years spent handling the human brain has taught him.

In the near future, developments in bio-enhancement technologies will not only alter how we make a living, communicate, and interact with each other, but will offer direct and precise control over our own physical and mental states. People will be able to sculpt their own selfhood over time, reshaping their bodies, augmenting their cognition, micromanaging their emotions and moods, and reconfiguring their character and personality. In this captivating audio series from Michael Bess, you’ll explore the promise and peril of tinkering with human bodies and identities.

In this lecture, Professor Kahn will examine the state of health care and biomedical research in the US and around the globe, through the lens of ethics. The lecture will start with some historical context and examples from bioethics, and draw some parallels from the past for the current state of our public discussions on a range of controversial bioethics issues.

With Mental Health, Inc., award-winning investigative journalist Art Levine delivers a Shock Doctrine-style exposé of the failures of our out-of-control, profits-driven mental health system, with a special emphasis on the failures of the pharmaceuticals industry, including the treatment of children with antipsychotics and disastrous PTSD protocols for veterans.

In the face of rapid medical advances in our world, bioethics is a serious concern for many in our society - Christians and non-Christians alike. Here, Gilbert Meilaender, professor of theological ethics at Valparaiso University in Indiana, contends that it is imperative for Christians to think consciously about bioethical issues as Christians if they are not to risk losing their Christian identity.

How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands? What is it like to cut into someone else's body? What is it like to stand by, powerless, while someone dies because of the incompetence of your seniors? How do you tell a beautiful young man who seems perfectly fit that he has only a few days left to live? Gabriel Weston worked in the big-city hospitals of the 21st century; a woman in a place dominated by Alpha males. Her world was one of disease, suffering and extraordinary pressure where a certain moral ambiguity and clinical detachment were necessary tools for survival.

In A Commitment to Compassion, Avram R. Kraft, MD, reminds us that each of us can make a difference. Avram makes that difference against a medical landscape, but in sharing his wisdom, insights, doubt, and vulnerabilities, he invites all of us to consider what compassion means and how it can be part of our daily living. As he states in a chapter called "Repairing the World", “Every day, we have an opportunity to make an impact on one another. You are only as good as what you bring to the table and not what you remove from it.”

Liz Parrish wants to cure ageing. She believes that ageing is a disease. She says regulation is stopping researchers from saving lives. But Liz won’t be stopped. In 2015, her company flew a patient to Colombia for the first treatment of its kind in humans: gene therapy to reverse biological ageing. Remarkably, they claim it worked. If that’s correct, then why are we still dying of old age? Journalist Frank Swain embarks on the hunt for the true story behind this controversial human experiment.

Already technology enables parents to select some genetic traits for their children, and soon it will be possible to begin to shape ourselves as a species. Countering loud cries of alarm, bioethics expert Ronald Green explains why our fears about genetic engineering are overblown and how we can move forward responsibly to create a better future.

A panoramic overview of biotechnologies that can endlessly boost human capabilities and the drastic changes these "superhuman" traits could trigger. Biotechnology is moving fast. In the coming decades, advanced pharmaceuticals, bioelectronics, and genetic interventions will be used not only to heal the sick but to boost human physical and mental performance to unprecedented levels.

The future of medicine is both amazing and terrifying. For the first time in human history, individual scientists and clinicians have the power to alter radically ways in which we live that were never before possible. This presentation explores some of the most exciting recent developments in medicine that promise to help us live longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives, ranging from novel reproductive technologies and cutting-edge immunotherapies to the harvesting of big data and the implementation of new systems of information exchange.

In Dying to Save You, Dr. William Queale takes you behind the scenes of our sickcare system. He uses deeply personal stories to explain how we got here and how systems thinking can get us out. But Dying to Save You isn’t just about medicine, science, and healthcare policy. This book is about you—and how you can stay out of the sickcare system altogether.

Rarely are human dilemmas out of the news. And what medical science can do and ought to do—or ought not to do—impinges on our personal lives, families and societies. John Wyatt examines the issues surrounding the beginning and end of life against the background of current medical-ethical thought. Writing out of a deep conviction that the Bible's view of our humanness points a way forward, he suggests how Christian healthcare professionals, churches and individuals can respond to today's challenges and opportunities.

In The Inevitable, award-winning journalist Katie Engelhart explores one of our most abiding taboos: assisted dying. From Avril, the 80-year-old British woman illegally importing pentobarbital, to the Australian doctor dispensing suicide manuals online, Engelhart travels the world to hear the stories of those on the quest for a 'good death'. A deeply reported portrait of everyday people struggling to make impossible decisions, The Inevitable sheds crucial light on what it means to flourish, live and die.