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Death, Disaster, and Public Health
Oxford University Press
March 2010
On Sale: March 1, 2010
361 pages
ISBN: 019539173X
EAN: 9780195391732
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Bioethics, still in its infancy, is routinely called on by
the government to provide political cover for controversial
public health decisions involving the life and death of
Americans. Doomsday or worst-case scenarios are often at the
heart of these biopolitical decisions. A central feature of
science fiction, these scenarios can impart useful insights.
But worst-case scenarios, like Frankenstein's monster, can
also be unpredictably destructive, undermining both
preparedness and the very values bioethics seeks to promote.
Discovering a new flu strain, for example, leads immediately
to visions of the 1918 flu pandemic, the worst in human
history. Likewise, a "ticking time bomb" scenario leads to
the use of the "saving lives" rationale that permits lawyers
to justify it and physicians to carry it out.
The
worst case charge of "death panels" continues to threaten
meaningful healthcare reform in the US. Fundamental change
in American healthcare, Annas argues, will require
fundamental change in American, including confronting our
obsession with technology and our denial of death, and
replacing our over-reliance on the military and market
metaphors in medicine. "A combination of the ecological and
rights metaphors could help us successfully navigate the
waters of change."
In Worst Case Bioethics,
George Annas employs contemporary disputes involving death
and disaster to explore the radical changes underway in
public health practice, the application of constitutional
law to medicine, and human rights discourse to promote human
health and wellbeing. Worst-case scenarios, especially
worst-case bioethics scenarios, distort debate, limit
options, rationalize human rights abuses, and undermine
equality and social justice. It is, nonetheless, possible to
temper worst-case scenarios in ways that promote both the
development of a meaningful American bioethics, and a life
and liberty affirming global health and human rights
movement.
Written at the intersection of law,
bioethics, public health, and human rights, Worst Case
Bioethics will interest not only bioethicists but
scholars in public health, public policy, and human rights
law, as well as members of the public who want to
participate in these policy debates.
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