Law and Bioethics: An Introduction

by Jerry Menikoff

Book Overview

While the American legal system has played an important role in shaping the field of bioethics, Law and Bioethics is the first book on the subject designed to be accessible to readers with little or no legal background. Detailing how the legal analysis of an issue in bioethics often differs from the "ethical" analysis, the book covers such topics as abortion, surrogacy, cloning, informed consent, maplractice, refusal of care, and organ transplantation...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0878408398
• ISBN13: 9780878408399
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.9" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

good service

The service was good..there was significant delay in the book being delivered, but after immediate response to an enquiry, all in all I was well pleased

An Excellent Text for Adoption in a Bioethics Course

I adopted this text in a graduate-level bioethics course for dual-degree medical students to introduce students to the leading legal cases that have proved so influential in the field of bioethics. (I used this text to supplement more philosophical-ethical-type readings.) At the end of the semester I was surprised by the number of glowing comments I received from students about this text. The text is structured along the lines of a law school case book. Most of the classic cases in bioethics are represented, as well as leading cases of relevance to medical practitioners. The author's introductory comments to each topic situate the cases in their historical, social, political, or legal contexts. I particularly found the notes and questions following each case to be extremely helpful and illuminating, and would often use these to orient and focus class discussions. Academics interested in adopting this text will be interested to know that the author provides, free of charge, an invaluable Teaching Manual to supplement this text (the author's email address is provided in the introduction). This text would be an excellent choice for adoption in graduate-level bioethics courses aimed at medical students, or as a text for a bioethics or health law course in law schools. It would also be suitable for an upper level undergraduate bioethics course in philosophy departments. Finally, this text would also be accessible to the intelligent reader with a general interest in some of the most interesting bioethical issues facing the medical and legal professions today, or to anyone interested in understanding the ways in which courts have addressed these issues. No technical medical or legal knowledge is presupposed by this text.