Search Results

This book deals with the following controversial issues in Jewish Law: abortion, assisted reproduction, genetics, the obligation to heal, patient autonomy, treatment of the terminally ill, the definition of death, organ donations, and the allocation of scarce medical resources. The book focuses upon the complex interplay between legal and moral elements in the decision-making process, particularly when questions of life and death (such as abortion and treatment of the terminally ill) are involved. The author argues that the moral element in Jewish biomedical law is of a universal, rational nature, and its theoretical basis may be located in a weak form of Natural law theory regarding the value of human life in the Jewish legal tradition. The concept of patient autonomy in Jewish biomedical law is more limited than in contemporary liberal jurisprudence, and is based upon theological as well as strictly legal elements. The influence of scientific thinking upon the decision-making process in Jewish biomedical law is illustrated in a discussion of the contemporary debate concerning the permissibility of heart transplants. In most chapters, Jewish law is compared and contrasted with Canon and Common Law, and the volume also discusses the role played by Jewish biomedical law in modern, secular Israeli law. In this context, it addresses the thorny issue of combining religious law with democratic principles within the framework of a secular legal system.

Theories of distributive justice are most severely tested in the area of disability. This book argues that utilitarianism performs better than egalitarian theories in this area: whereas egalitarianism helps the disabled either too little or too much, utilitarianism achieves the proper balance by placing resources where they will do the most good. The book offers what may be the broadest critique of egalitarian theory from a utilitarian perspective. It addresses the work of egalitarian theorists John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Amartya Sen, Bruce Ackerman, Martha Nussbaum, Norman Daniels, Philippe Van Parijs, and others. It claims that egalitarians are often driven to borrow elements of utilitarianism in order to make their theories at all plausible. The book concludes with an acknowledgment that both utilitarians and egalitarians face problems in the distribution of life-saving medical resources. It advocates a version of utilitarianism that would distribute life-saving resources based on life expectancy, not quality of life. Egalitarian theories, it argues, ignore life expectancy and so are again found wanting.

This book provides a massive amount of new research on several popular and less-examined topics pertaining to the relationship between economics and aging. Among the many themes explored in this volume, considerable attention is given to new research on retirement savings, the cost and efficiency of medical resources, and the predictors of health events. The volume begins with a discussion of the risks and merits of 401(k) plans. Subsequent chapters present recent analysis of the growth of Medicare costs; the different aspects of disability; and the evolution of health, wealth, and living arrangements over the life course. Keeping with the global tradition of previous volumes, the book also includes comparative studies on savings behavior in Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States; an examination of household savings among different age groups in Germany; and a chapter devoted to population aging and the plight of widows in India.

Because medicine can preserve life, restore health and maintain the body’s functions, it is widely acknowledged as a basic good that just societies should provide for their members. Yet, there is wide disagreement over the scope and content of what to provide, to whom, how, when, and why. In this book, some of the best-known philosophers, physicians, legal scholars, political scientists, and economists writing on the subject discuss what social justice in medicine should be. The forty-two chapters in this second edition update and expand upon the thirty-four chapters of the first edition. Eighteen chapters from the original volume are revised to address policy changes and challenging issues that have emerged in the intervening decade. Twenty-two chapters are entirely new. The treatment of foundational theory and conceptual issues related to access to health care and rationing medical resources have been expanded to provide a more comprehensive and nuanced discussion of the background concepts that underlie distributive justice debates, with global perspectives on health and well-being added. New additions to the section on health care justice for specific populations include chapters on health care for the chronically ill, soldiers, prisoners, the severely cognitively disabled, and the LGBT population. New chapters address questions of justice related to genetics, medical malpractice, research on human subjects, pandemic and disaster planning, newborn screening, and justice for the brain dead and those with profound neurological injury.