Main description:

Medical care and biomedical research are rapidly becoming global. Ethical questions that once arose only in the narrow context of the physician-patient relationship in relatively prosperous societies are now being raised across societies, cultures, and continents. For example, what should be the "standard of care" for clinical trials of medical innovations in poorer countries? Are researchers obligated to compare new therapies or drugs with the best known ones
available, or can they use as a benchmark the actual treatments (or lack of treatments) available to poor people? Should pharmaceutical companies seeking to lower the costs of new drug trials be allowed to enrol citizens of less developed countries in them even when those individuals cannot afford and will
not be eligible for the resulting drugs? More generally, should the norms of medicine and research be the same across cultures or can they adapt to local social, economic, or religious conditions? Global Bioethics gathers some of the world's leading bioethicists to explore many of the new questions raised by the globalization of medical care and biomedical research. Among the topics covered are the impact of globalization on the norms of medical ethics, the conduct of international
research, the ethics of international collaborations, challenges to medical professionalism in the international setting, and the relation of religion to global bioethics.

Contents:

PART 1 NORMATIVE BASES ; 1. Population-Level Bioethics: Mapping a New Agenda ; 2. What Is It Like to Be A Bird? Wikler and Brock on the Ethics of Population Health ; 3. The Evolving Norms of Medical Ethics ; 4. Convergent Trends in Modern Medical Ethics: Medicine-based Ethics and Human Rights ; PART 2 GLOBAL RESEARCH ETHICS ; 5. Just Research in an Unjust World: Can Harm Reduction Be an Acceptable Tool for Public Health Prevention Research? ; 6. Harm Reduction Research: Ethics and Compliance ; 7. Global Justice, Human Rights, and Health ; PART 3 BIOMEDICAL/BIOETHICAL COLLABORATIONS ; 8. Achieving Global Justice in Health Through Global Research Ethics: Supplementing Macklin's "Top-Down" Approach with one from the "Ground Up" ; 9. Harnessing Advanced Technologies for Global Health Equity ; PART 4 TRAINING PROFESSIONAL, ETHICAL PHYSICIANS ; 10. Medical Education for a Changing World: On Professionalism in Medicine and Medical Education ; 11. Professionalism and Medical Education in the Developing World ; PART 5 EUTHANASIA AND PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED DEATH ; 12. Euthanasia: Not Just for Rich Countries ; PART 6 GLOBAL BIOETHICS AND RELIGION ; 13. Embryo as Epiphenomenon: Understanding our Global Stem Cell Debates ; 14. The Role and Influence of Religions in Bioethics ; PART 7 PUBLIC GLOBAL BIOETHICS CONSULTATIONS ; 15. Global Norms, Informed Consensus and Hypocrisy in Bioethics ; 16. Global Norms in Bioethics: Problems and Prospects