Social Science Perspectives on Medical Ethics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Introduction

      • George Weisz

      Pages 3-15

3. Clinical Encounters of the Ethical Kind

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. Clinical Trials and the Collective Ethic: The Case of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and the Treatment of Multiple Sclerosis

      • Ian Robinson

      Pages 19-39

   3. Biomedical Rituals and Informed Consent: Native Canadians and the Negotiation of Clinical Trust

      • Joseph M. Kaufert, John D. O’Neil

      Pages 41-63

   4. Moral Conflicts in a Psychiatric Hospital Treating Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

      • Allan Young

      Pages 65-82

   5. Institutional Factors Affecting Psychiatric Admission and Commitment Decisions

      • Charles W. Lidz, Edward P. Mulvey

      Pages 83-96

4. Ethics in the Public Arena

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 97-97

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   2. Reaching Consensus About Death: Heart Transplants and Cultural Identity in Japan

      • Margaret Lock, Christina Honde

      Pages 99-119

   3. Ethics, Politics and Contraception: Canada and the Licensing of Depo-Provera

      • Patricia A. Kaufert

      Pages 121-141

5. The Institutions and Ideology of Medical Ethics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 143-143

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   2. The Origins of Medical Ethics in France: The International Congress of Morale Médicale of 1955

      • George Weisz

      Pages 145-161

   3. The British General Medical Council and Medical Ethics

      • Margaret Stacey

      Pages 163-184

   4. Human Experimentation and the Origins of Bioethics in the United States

      • David J. Rothman

      Pages 185-200

   5. The Evolution of American Bioethics: A Sociological Perspective

      • Renée C. Fox

      Pages 201-217

6. Medical Ethics and Social Science

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 219-219

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   2. Medical Anthropology and the Comparative Study of Medical Ethics

      • Richard W. Lieban

      Pages 221-239

   3. Morality and the Social Sciences

      • Barry Hoffmaster

      Pages 241-260

   4. Ethics and Ethnography in Neonatal Intensive Care

      • Bruce Jennings

      Pages 261-272

Medical or hio- ethics has in recent years been a growth industry. Journals, Centers and Associations devoted to the subject proliferate. Medical schools seem increasingly to be filling rare positions in the humanities and social sciences with ethicists. Hardly a day passes without some media scrutiny of one or another ethical dilemma resulting from our new-found ability to transform the natural conditions of life. Although bioethics is a self-consciously interdisciplinary field, it has not attracted the collaboration of many social scientists. In fact, social scientists who specialize in the study of medicine have in many cases watched its development with a certain ambivalence. No one disputes the significance and often the painfulness of the issues and choices being addressed. But there is something about the way these issues are usually handled which seems somehow inappropri­ ate if not wrong-headed to one trained in a discipline like sociology or history. In their analyses of complex situations, ethicists often appear grandly oblivious to the social and cultural context in which these occur, and indeed to empirical referents of any sort. Nor do they seem very conscious of the cultural specificity of many of the values and procedures they utilize when making ethical judg­ ments. The unease felt by many in the social sciences was given articulate expression in a paper by Renee Fox and Judith Swazey which appeared in 1984.

• Evolution
• Institution
• Nation
• american bioethics
• bioethics
• ethics
• medical ethics
• morality

• Department of Humanities and Social Studies in Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

  George Weisz

Policies and ethics