A timely collection of essays on the pressing possibilities and risks of gene-editing technology. Scientists and genetic engineers are becoming increasingly adept at editing the human genome. How far can-and should-they go in editing future generations? In The Promise and Peril of CRISPR, editor Neal Baer brings together a timely collection of ......
Outlines how the social dimensions of medical diagnosis can deepen our understanding of health. Diagnosis is central to medicine. It creates order, explains illness, identifies treatments, and predicts outcomes. In Putting a Name to It, Annemarie Jutel presents medical diagnosis as more than a mere clinical tool, but as a social phenomenon with ......
Explores human dignity and care in the face of disease and disability. Complex contemporary experiences with disease, death, and disability in the United States have made the concept of human dignity seem outdated. In Doing Dignity: Ethical Praxis and the Politics of Care, Christa Teston challenges conventional notions of dignity and, based on ......
Befriending the North Wind is about the moral lives of children and their agency in decisions about death. It examines the dimensions of human meaning children reveal and the new horizons they open to us. It asserts that children can die a good death and that they can and should have a voice in their end-of-life care.
How the Science of Placebos and Nocebos Can Improve Health Care
The history, philosophy, ethics, and science behind the placebo and nocebo effects. Placebos are the most widely used treatments in the history of medicine. Thousands of studies show that they can be effective and make us happier and healthier. Yet confusion about what placebos are and how to measure their effects prevents some doctors from ......
Brazil's Zika outbreak revealed extreme health disparities and reproductive injustice across racial and socioeconomic lines. Brazil's 2015 Zika outbreak led to severe illnesses for many and the birth of several thousands of children with severe brain damage. Even though mosquito-borne diseases such as the Zika virus affect people across society, ......
Explores the historical roots of controversies over abortion, fetal personhood, miscarriage, and maternal mortality. On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, asserting that the Constitution did not confer the right to abortion. This ruling, in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case, was the culmination of a ......
A Dignified Ending challenges the idea that prolonging life by every means possible is the only reasonable response to a dire diagnosis or to intractable suffering. It uses true accounts to illustrate how people have choreographed their deaths, and it recommends that death with dignity laws include dementias and other neurodegenerative disorders.
From the contributors to The Conversation, this collection of essays by leading experts in biotechnology provides foundational knowledge on a range of topics, from CRISPR gene sequencing to the ethics of GMOs and "designer babies." In The Conversation on Biotechnology, editor Marc Zimmer collects essays from The Conversation U.S. by top ......
