Ethical Health Care [Paperback]

Offering a format that is significantly different than that offered by other books, Ethical Health Carebeings by asking what is meant by health and how it is achieved. The book then proceeds to explore with care and context the nature of the relationship between patients and clinicians, health care providers and the societies in which they inhabit, and finally the relationship between the health care enterprise and the international community. By emphasizing the ethical issues that arise in the broad quest to foster human health, and appreciating that health is not primarily a function of medical interventions, Ethical Health Careintroduces students to problems such as the international distribution of pharmaceuticals and the dangers of reemerging infections. To a far greater extent than is done traditionally, Ethical Health Careprovides an interdisciplinary perspective to bioethics, relying heavily upon the teachings of economics, law, and public health.

1. Bioethics: Expanding our Horizon.

Shifting Paradigms.

The Bioethical Perspective.

Questions of Justice.

The History of Public Health.

The Population Perspective.

Recommended Readings.

2. The Building Blocks of Health.

What is Health?

Rene Dubois, Health and Creative Adaptation.

Daniel Callahan, The WHO Definition of Health.

What Makes Us Healthy?

Scot D. Yoder, Individual Responsibility for Health, Decision Not Discovery.

Geoffrey Rose, Sick Individuals and Sick Populations.

Ichiro Kawachi, Bruce Kennedy, Kimberly Lochner, Long Live Community: Social Capital as Public Health.

Finn Diderichsen, Timothy Evans, Margaret Whitehead, The Social Basis Of Disparities in Health.

The Economics of Health.

John K. Iglehart, The American Health Care System  Expenditures.