The biological revolution, with its attendant technological powers to alter nature and human nature, demands fundamental and cautionary reflection on questions of the highest ethical importance. In this thoughtful book on contemporary issues in bioethics, Stephen G. Post explores nine major topics ranging from birth and adolescence to aging and death. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Post clearly illuminates the issues, probes the ethical alternatives, and examines the cultural changes that shape current presuppositions about the right and good. This book will be of interest to scholars in bioethics, philosophy, and religious studies; health-care professionals; and the general reader concerned with these pressing questions of life and death.
Stephen G. Post is president of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love at Stony Brook University.
1. Designer Babies, Selective Abortion, and Human Perfection2. The Moral Meaning of Relinquishing an Infant: Reflections on Adoption3. Adolescents in Time of AIDS4. Psychiatry and the Challenge of Religious Toleration5. American Culture and Good Death6. The Covenant of Basic Caring7. Old-Age-Based Rationing, Dementia, and Quality of Life8. The Legacy of Racial Hygiene: Death and Data9. The Emergence of Species Impartiality: A Medical Critique of Biocentrism