Fire, flood, earthquake, famine, pestilence, and warfare are no strangers to our experience. Once, we sought to placate the gods who brought these evils upon us. Today, clinicians, engineers, and politicians replace priests, prophets, seers, and shamans, and we_Americans in particular_think to impose our will upon the world. In times of catastrophe, issues of good and evil surrender to rapid, nearly automatic, operational response. Yet the catastrophic event poses unavoidable moral choices, ones that are more politically and emotionally complex since 9/11 and our 'War on Terrorism.' This book benefits from the emergence of bioethics as it has evolved from its clinical roots to address policy, politics, and social practice far removed from that origin. At the same time, the clinical focus on narratives and cases provides a tangible center for ethical reflection. It reminds us that ethics is about persons and their choices, a perspective often lost to abstraction when ethics is left to the ministrations of academe. By treating the catastrophic event as both a category and a genre, Bioethics connects to aesthetics and so enables us to enrich ethical inquiry by ranging from pandemic, hurricane, and flood to terrorist attack.

Auteur
Howard B. Radest is adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort.

Contenu

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2
Chapter 1. The Many Faces of Terror
Chapter 3
Chapter 2. Ethics, Thick and Thin
Chapter 4
Chapter 3. The Law
Chapter 5
Chapter 4. Katrina?Rehearsal for Terrorism
Chapter 6
Chapter 5. The Case of Dr. Pou
Chapter 7
Chapter 6. SARS
Chapter 8
Chapter 7. It Hasn't Happened...Yet!
Chapter 9
Chapter 8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Chapter 10
Chapter 9. Sword of Damocles?
Chapter 11
Chapter 10. Conclusions and Confusions