Overview

"Before Bioethics narrates the history of American medical ethics from its colonial origins to current bioethical controversies over abortion, AIDS, animal rights, and physician-assisted suicide. This comprehensive history tracks the evolution of American medical ethics over four centuries, from colonial midwives and physicians' oaths to medical society codes, through the bioethics revolution. Applying the concept of ""morally disruptive technologies,"" it analyzes the impact of the stethoscope on conceptions of fetal life and the criminalization of abortion, and the impact of the ventilator on our conception of death and the treatment of the dying. The narrative offers tales of those whose lives were affected by the medical ethics of their era: unwed mothers executed by puritans because midwives found them with stillborn babies; the unlikely trio-an Irishman, a Sephardic Jew and in-the-closet gay public health reformer-who drafted the American Medical Association's code of ethics but received no credit for their achievement, and the founder of American gynecology celebrated during his own era but condemned today because he perfected his surgical procedures on un-anesthetized African American slave women. The book concludes by exploring the reasons underlying American society's empowerment of a hodgepodge of ex-theologians, humanist clinicians and researchers, lawyers and philosophers-the bioethicists-as authorities able to address research ethics scandals and the ethical problems generated by morally disruptive technologies.To access the companion website for Before Bioethics: A History of American Medical Ethics from the Colonial Period to the Bioethics Revolution, please visit: http://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780199774111/"

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert Baker (, Union College)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 3.80cm , Length: 23.60cm
Weight:   0.780kg
ISBN:  

9780199774111

ISBN 10:   0199774110
Pages:   496
Publication Date:   19 September 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Preface Chapter 1: Introduction: On Medical Ethics and Morality Chapter 2: Midwives' Oaths of Fidelity and Diligence Chapter 3: A Medical Ethics of Fidelity, Chastity and Gentlemanly Honor Chapter 4: The Lecturers: Samuel Bard and Benjamin Rush Chapter 5: Codes of Medical Police and Ethics, 1806-1846 Chapter 6: A National Code of Medical Ethics, 1847 Chapter 7: Professional Medical Ethics 1848-1875: Abortion, Inquisition and Exclusion Chapter 8: The Anti-Code Revolt: Laissez Medical Faire Ethics, 1876-1979 Chapter 9: Medical Ethics and the Research Imperative: 1800-1946 Chapter 10: Explaining The Birth of Bioethics, 1947-1999

Reviews

<br> In this remarkable and important book, Baker reminds us that bioethics did not appear from nowhere, but rather is the most recent incarnation of medical morality: the contemporary version of the codes that have governed medical practice in America since the Puritans. - Raymond de Vries, Bioethics Program, School of Medicine, University of Michigan <br><p><br>

since becoming a bioethicist, he [Robert Baker] has fulfilled the promise of this interdisciplinary field. Both here and elsewhere he has made a significant contribution to the history of medical ethics Nathan Emerich, Social History of Medicine

Author Information

"Robert Baker is William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy at Union College and Director of the Union Graduate College-Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bioethics Program. A four-time National Endowment for the Humanities awardee, Baker is founding chair of the Affinity Group on the History of Medical Ethics of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He has authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited numerous scholarly articles, reports and books, including the American Medical Ethics Revolution and The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics. Both books were awarded a citation by Choice, the journal of academic libraries, as an ""outstanding book in the health sciences"" for their respective years. Baker also co-authored a 2008 report on African American physicians and organized medicine that prompted the board of the AMA to apologize publicly for its past treatment of African American physicians."

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