Vulnerability: Challenging Bioethics

· Routledge
Ebook
264
Pages
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More

About this ebook

Alongside globalization, the sense of vulnerability among people and populations has increased. We feel vulnerable to disease as new infections spread rapidly across the globe, while disasters and climate change make health increasingly precarious. Moreover, clinical trials of new drugs often exploit vulnerable populations in developing countries that otherwise have no access to healthcare and new genetic technologies make people with disabilities vulnerable to discrimination. Therefore the concept of ‘vulnerability’ has contributed new ideas to the debates about the ethical dimensions of medicine and healthcare.

This book explains and elaborates the new concept of vulnerability in today’s bioethics. Firstly, Henk ten Have argues that vulnerability cannot be fully understood within the framework of individual autonomy that dominates mainstream bioethics today: it is often not the individual person who is vulnerable, rather that his or her vulnerability is created through the social and economic conditions in which he or she lives. Contending that the language of vulnerability offers perspectives beyond the traditional autonomy model, this book offers a new approach which will enable bioethics to evolve into a global enterprise.

This groundbreaking book critically analyses the concept of vulnerability as a global phenomenon. It will appeal to scholars and students of ethics, bioethics, globalization, healthcare, medical science, medical research, culture, law, and politics.

About the author

Henk ten Have is Director of the Center for Healthcare Ethics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, USA. He studied medicine and philosophy in the Netherlands, and worked as a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of the Universities of Maastricht and Nijmegen. From 2003 until 2010 he joined UNESCO in Paris as Director of the Division of Ethics of Science and Technology. His recent publications include the Handbook of Global Bioethics (2014) and Global Bioethics: An Introduction (2016). He is currently working on the Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics (2016).

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.