The Birth of Bioethics [Hardcover]

Advance Praise for The Birth of Bioethics:

"Well-written and insightful, it wears its wide learning lightly and thus provides a wide range of potential readers with access to some complex matters in ways that they can readily understand...I learned much from this clear and interesting volume."--James Childress, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia

"From very small, tentative beginnings, the field of bioethics has grown to an enormous, influential force in American medicine and health care. Albert Jonsen lays this out with enormous clarity and insight, and the record he presents of the development in recent decades is not only well worth reading, but immensely interesting as well."--Daniel Callahan, The Hastings Center

"Well-written and insightful, it wears its wide learning lightly and thus provides a wide range of potential readers with access to some complex matters in ways that they can readily understand... I learned much from this clear and interesting volume."--James Childress, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia

"An amazing piece of work capturing the spirit and the details of the complicated history of bioethics. As one who lived through this period participating in many of the debates and attending many of the meetings discussed in this volume, I was moved by the accuracy and completeness of the account. At the same time, I learned a great deal about the period from the stylishly written, warmly sensitive account. Anyone who works in medicine, medical ethics or health policy after this crucial period of bioethics' birth and early generation, needs to know this story."--Robert Veatch, Georgetown University

"Albert Jonsen...is a gifted writer of clear and arresting prose, a trait not widely found in bioethics circles....a singular success."--Medical Humanities Review

"Bioethics, Albert Jonsen observes in the introduction to his important, highly personal, and readable book, did not begin with a bang. But what becomes very clear, as one reads his recollections of the origins of the field, is that it did not begin with people prone to emit whimpers....The story told in The Birth of Bioethics is organized around the cutting edge problems that defined the field in the late 1960s and 1970s....Jonsen brings an elephantine memory and deft pen to telling the story of what happened when the first theologians, philosophers, and physicians found themselves out on these ethical frontiers of medicine without much in the way of intellectual tools to help them."--JAMA

"Jonsen's unique insights, infused by the compassion he obviously feels, recommend this book strongly."--The New England Journal of Medicine

"Jonsen attends to the complexity of each debate and offers fair coverage of even contentious points....A 'must read' for all students of bioethics...and for anyone interested in contemporary American culture."--Religious Studies Review

"While this treatment of the theoretical roots of bioethics in theology and philosophy are likely to prove useful for many, the most engaging discussion is to be found in Chapters 5-9. Each of these chapters is a well-researched synopsis of the development of these important and complex subjects. Utilizing primary and secondary sources, the author provides a compelling and nyanced account of the persons and events that contributed to the development of these contentious topics. Presenting the first seious historical account of the field, he establishes not only the standard for future historical scholarship, but provides an insightful commentary on how bioethics has come to enjoy a public prominence. He admirably helps readers to understand the intellectual and ethical challenges that make bioethics such a vibrant part of contemporary medicine, science, and society." --Doody's

Bioethics represents a dramatic revision of the centuries-old ethics that governed the behavior of physicians and their relationships with patients. Those ethics were challenged in the years after World War II by remarkable advances in biomedical science and medicine that raised questions about the definition of death, the use of life-support systems, organ transplantation, and reproductive manipulation. In response, philosophers and theologians, lawyers and social scientists joined with physicians and scientists to rethink and revise the old standards. Governments established commissions to recommend policies. Courts heard arguments and legislatures passed laws. This book is the first broad history of the growing field of bioethics. Covering the period 1947-1987, it examines the origin and evolution of the debates over human experimentation, genetic engineering, organ transplantation, termination of life-sustaining treatment, and new reproductive technologies. It assesses the contributions of philosophy, theology, law and the social sciences to the expanding discourse of bioethics. Written by one of the field's founders, it is based on extensive archival research into resources that are difficult to obtain and on interviews with many leading figures. A very readable account of the development of bioethics, the book stresses the history of ideas but does not neglect the social and cultural context and the people involved.