Bioethics in Social Context

Barry Hoffmaster is professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. From 1991 to 1996 he was the Director of the Westminster Institute for Ethics and Human Values in London, Ontario, and he served as President of the Canadian Bioethics Society in 1994-94. He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center.

"Bioethics in Social Context energizes both bioethics and ethnography. The authors expand the scope of what issues bioethics should consider, and they demonstrate how culture, mass media, emotions, families, and institutions are relevant in consideration of those issues. In doing all this, they open new possibilities for the empirical investigation of moral life." -Arthur W. Frank, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, and author of The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics and At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness "...this book provides a valuable contribution to the expanding field of empirically based ethics, or 'ethics in use', revealing the moral decisions people make in the real world, and how and why they make those decisions." -Journal of Medical Ethics

• CONTENTS Introduction: BARRY HOFFMASTER Chapters SHARON R. KAUFMAN, Clinical Narratives and Ethical Dilemmas in Geriatrics MARGARET LOCK, Situated Ethics, Culture, and the Brain Death "Problem" in Japan SYDNEY A. HALPERN, Constructing Moral Boundaries: Public Discourse on Human Experimentation in Twentieth-Century America PETER CONRAD, Media Images, Genetics, and Culture: Potential Impacts of Reporting Scientific Findings on Bioethics RENEE R. ANSPACH AND DIANE BEESON, Emotions in Medical and Moral Life PATRICIA A. MARSHALL, A Contextual Approach to Clinical Ethics Consultation DIANE BEESONAND TERESA DOKSUM, Family Values and Resistance to Genetic Testing CATE McBURNEY, Ethics Committees and Social Change: Plus ca change...? CHARLES L. BOSK, Irony, Ethnography, and Informed Consent Afterword: BARRY HOFFMASTER