Contemporary Issues in Biomedical Ethics by John W Davis

Contemporary Issues in Biomedical Ethics by John W Davis

Not long ago, a colleague chided me for using the term the biological revolution. Like many others, I have employed it as an umbrella term to refer to the seemingly vast, rapidly-moving, and fre- quently bewildering developments of contemporary biomedicine: psy- chosurgery, genetic counseling and engineering, artificial heart-lung machines, organ transplants-and on and on. The real biological revo- lution, he pointed out, began back in the nineteenth century in Europe. For it was then that death rates and infant mortality began to decline, the germ theory of disease was firmly established, Darwin took his famous trip on the Beagle, and Gregor Mendel stumbled on to some fundamental principles of heredity. My friend, I think, was both right and wrong. The biological revolution did have its roots in the nineteenth century; that is when it first began to unfold. Yet, like many intellectual and scientific upheav- als, its force was not felt for decades. Indeed, it seems fair to say that it was not until after the Second World War that the full force of the earlier discoveries in biology and medicine began to have a major impact, an impact that was all the more heightened by the rapid bi- omedical developments after the war.

Barry Hoffmaster, a bioethicist, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.

Cliff Hooker, a philosopher of science, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780896030022
ISBN 10	0896030024
Title	Contemporary Issues in Biomedical Ethics
Author	John W Davis
Series	Contemporary Issues In Biomedicine Ethics And Society
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Humana Press Inc.
Year published	1979-03-31
Number of pages	300
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.