Principles of Biomedical Ethics

When this book first appeared in 1979, it was greeted as a landmark in its field, a successful effort to elucidate the underlying principles of medical ethics in clear, non-technical language. Rather than taking a topical approach to ethical issues, the authors systematically analyzed the principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice to provide an integrated framework through which diverse moral problems could be handled.
In this third edition, the authors provide a wealth of new material on autonomy and informed consent, virtue, privacy, supererogation, rationing, death and dying, clinical research, AIDS, and many other issues. The authors illuminate the controversies and dilemmas that plague biomedical researchers, physicians and health care professionals by analyzing moral rules, theories, and principles in relation to practical issues and cases. The text has both greater depth and a sharper clinical focus; many new cases have been added, and short case vignettes have been woven into the text. Up-to-date and complete, the book provides a systematic and comprehensive interpretation of the moral principals that apply to biomedicine and is certain to remain the standard text for medical ethics courses for years to come.

About the Authors
Tom L. Beauchamp is Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar at The Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. He is the coauthor of The Virtuous Journalist (Oxford, 1987) and A History and Theory of Informed Consent (Oxford, 1986). James F. Childress is Professor of Religious Studies and Medical Education at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Who Should Decide? Paternalism in Health Care (Oxford, cloth, 1982; paper, 1985).