Suffering and Bioethics

Edited by Ronald M. Green and Nathan J. Palpant

This book brings together scientists and scholars from the fields of medicine, biology, neuroscience, theology and bioethics to examine the meaning of suffering and its implications for medical interventions and medical training.
Covers topics at the center of current debates such as: euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, animal suffering and the use of animals in biomedical research, assisted reproductive technologies, genetic and genomic interventions and prenatal testing, stem cell technologies and regenerative medicine.

Suffering and Bioethics

Edited by Ronald M. Green and Nathan J. Palpant

Description

Long before it cured disease, medicine aimed to relieve suffering-but despite that precedence, the relief of suffering often takes a back seat in today's biomedical research and treatment. Modern bioethics, too, has been slow to come to terms with suffering. Attention to ethical quandaries has sometimes displaced attention to the experience of patients.

This book seeks to place suffering at the center of bioethical thinking once again. Among the questions its contributors explore are: What is the meaning of suffering? How does it relate to pain? If there can be pain without suffering, can there be suffering without pain? Does suffering require advanced cognitive abilities? Can animals suffer? Many believe that we have strong obligations to relieve or minimize suffering; what are the limits of these obligations? Does the relief of suffering justify the termination of a patient's life, as proponents of euthanasia maintain? What is the bearing of suffering on the cherished bioethical principle of autonomy? Can suffering impair a patient's ability to make reasoned choices? To what extent must the encounter with suffering be an important component of medical education? Do religious traditions ever move from efforts to explain and relieve suffering to positions that justify and promote it?

The aim of this book is to undertake a new foray into this "foreign territory" of suffering. With a foreword by the distinguished bioethicist Daniel Callahan, its twenty-two chapters, authored by leading scholars in science and bioethics, are organized so as to examine suffering in its biological, psychological, clinical, religious, and ethical dimensions.

Suffering and Bioethics

Edited by Ronald M. Green and Nathan J. Palpant

Foreword - Daniel Callahan
Suffering and Bioethics: an introduction to the volume - Ronald M. Green and Nathan J. Palpant

Part 1: The Nature, Meaning, and Experience of Suffering

1. Suffering and Human Dignity - Eric Cassell
2. Understanding Suffering - Barry Hoffmaster,
3. Paying Homage to the Silence of Suffering - Susan and Gordon Marino
4. Suffering, and the Promise of a World without Pain - Joseph Amato

Part 2: Suffering in Biology

5. Social Neuroscience Meets Philosophy: Suffering, Empathy, and Moral Cognition -Jean Decety
6. The Biology of Suffering - Daniel Krashin, Natalia Murinova, Catherine Q. Howe, and Jane Ballantyne
7. What is Suffering and What Sorts of Beings Can Suffer? - David Degrazia

Part 3: Suffering in Policy and Law

8. Individual and Social Callousness Toward Human Suffering - Daniel B. Hinshaw, Peter D. Jacobson, and Marisa P. Weisel
9. Human Rights and the Moral Obligation to Alleviate Suffering - Roberto Andorno and Cristiana Baffone
10. Exploring Interactions Between Suffering and the Law - Margaret Somerville

Part 4: Worldview Perspectives on Suffering and Medicine

11. Suffering: A Catholic Theological-Ethical View -Lisa Cahill
12. The Orthodox Christian View of Suffering - H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr.
13. Redemptive Suffering Redeemed: A Protestant View of Suffering - Karen Lebacqz
14. Suffering: Reflections from the Jewish Tradition - Laurie Zoloth
15. Human Suffering through Illness in the Context of Islamic Bioethics - Abdulaziz Sachedina
16. Endure, Adapt, or Overcome? The Concept of 'Suffering' in Buddhist Bioethics - Jens Schlieter
17. Human Suffering and the Limits of Secular Bioethics - Mark Cherry

Part 5: Suffering in the Ethics of Contemporary Medicine and Biotechnology

18. Reproductive Technology in Suffering's Shadow - Paul Lauritzen
19. Genomic Information and Suffering in the Genomic Era - Roberta Berry
20. Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis and the Prevention of Suffering - Mary Anderlik Majumder

Part 6: Concluding Thoughts

21. Suffering and Ethics in an Age of Empowerment - Nathan J. Palpant
22. The Evil of Suffering - Ronald M. Green

Suffering and Bioethics

Edited by Ronald M. Green and Nathan J. Palpant

Author Information

Ronald M. Green is Professor for the Study of Ethics and Human Values in the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College and a member of the department of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine. From 1992 to 2011 he directed Dartmouth's Ethics Institute. In 1994 he served on the National Institute's of Health's Human Embryo Research Panel and in 1996-97 he served as founding director of the Institute's Office of Genome Ethics. The author of nine books and editor of three, he has published over one hundred and sixty articles on philosophical and applied ethics. His 2007 book Babies by Design (Yale) has topped the Amazon.com listing of books on genetic engineering. In 2005, Professor Green was named a Guggenheim Fellow.

Nathan J. Palpant is Acting Instructor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Washington, Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine. His scientific research focuses on developmental fate choices and therapeutic applications of lateral plate mesoderm derivatives. Dr. Palpant's work in bioethics has focused on the translational implications of nuclease-mediated genetic engineering and human embryonic stem cells. He is co-editor of Human Dignity and Bioethics: from Worldviews to the Public Square (Routledge, Annals of Bioethics, 2013).

Contributors:

Joseph A. Amato

Roberto Andorno

Cristiana Baffone

Roberta M. Berry

Jane C. Ballantyne

Lisa Sowle Cahill

Daniel Callahan

Eric J. Cassell

Mark J. Cherry

Jean Decety

David Degrazia

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.

Ronald M. Green

Daniel B. Hinshaw

Barry Hoffmaster

Catherine Q. Howe

Peter D. Jacobson

Daniel Krashin

Paul Lauritzen

Rev. Karen Lebacqz

Mary Anderlik Majumder

Gordon Marino

Susan Marino

Natalia Murinova

Nathan Palpant

Abdulaziz Sachedina

Jens Schlieter

Margaret Somerville

Marisa P. Weisel

Laurie Zoloth

Suffering and Bioethics

Edited by Ronald M. Green and Nathan J. Palpant

Reviews and Awards

"This book mirrors the complex nature of suffering itself, a phenomenon that, although generally bad, can also be generative, and that although seemingly spiritual, can have -- as the chapter "Biology of Suffering" shows -- a deep physical impact. By showing such complexity, the book provides an entry into the kind of truly profound understanding of suffering that is needed, but often lacking, in bioethics as a field." -- Doody's