Short literature notices

SHORT LITERATURE NOTICES Short literature notices

What does it mean to be a ‘‘just’’ and ‘‘caring’’ society when we have only limited resources to meet virtually unlimited health care needs? In Just Caring. Health Care Rationing and Democratic Deliberation Leonard Fleck identifies health care rationing as the moral problem of contemporary health care. At present, millions of Americans go without health insurance, thousands of whom die prematur...

Short literature notices

Human genetic databases (HGDs) are collections of samples and data from large numbers of citizens that are being established in order to study interactions between genes and the environment and promise new insights for diseases and their treatments. The involvement of commercial companies and the risks to confidentiality of data and samples stored in HGDs have stirred considerable debate. Icela...

Short literature notices

The rapid progress in neuroscience has posed new and stimulating challenges to current ethical decision-making, anthropological constructs and normative criteria. These challenges are now articulated and commented on in a sweeping, popularly written overview by Michael S. Gazzaniga, who seems to bring the best expertise for such an overview as a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth ...

Short literature notices

Short literature notices

John Harris’ new book ‘‘Enhancing Evolution’’ is provoking and thought-provoking since it makes an ‘‘ethical case for making better people’’ (intended as an ethical, not a policy proposal). It is provoking since it deals with two hotly debated ethical problems: the question of enhancing human beings and the moral status of the human embryo, and it deals with these problems in a clear language a...