New ethics for the public's health

Description

Most books about ethics and health focus on issues arising from individual patients and their relationships with doctors and other health professionals. More and more, however, the ethical issues of the future are challenges that face whole communities, not just individual patients. This book is an edited collection of readings that addresses these public health challenges. Many of the issues considered - such as policy for alcohol and other drugs, newly emergent epidemics, and violence prevention - are public health concerns beyond the purview of traditional bioethics. Others, such as access to health care, managed care, reproductive technologies, and genetic testing, are covered in bioethics texts, but here they are approached from the distinct viewpoint of public health. The book makes explicit the community perspective of public health, as well as the fields emphasis on prevention. It examines the conceptual issues raised by the public health perspective (i.e., what is meant by community, the common good, and individual autonomy) as well as the policies that can be developed when health problems are approached in population-based, preventive terms Content: PART I: THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC HEALTH AS ETHICS INTRODUCTION 1. The Population Perspective PART II: PUBLIC HEALTH AS COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE 2. Community 3. Prevention and Its Limits PART III: MODERN CHALLENGES TO THE PUBLICS HEALTH 4. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs 5. Injury and Violence 6. AIDS and Other Newly Emergent Diseases 7. Justice and Health Care PART IV: NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE PUBLICS HEALTH 8. Reproductive Issues 9. Genetic Screening, Testing, and Therapy