In this article, the authors review the development of the Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (MOLST) Program and recent landmark legislation in New York State in the context of advance care planning and shared medical decision making at the end of life. Social workers are central health care professionals in working with patients, families, practitioners, health care agents, and surr...

The present article allows to explore, analyze and reflect on the consequences and problems posed by biobanks and attempts to prove the need of social and humanitarian support in establishing and functioning of biobanks as a new type of scientific institutions. The basis of the article is the latest publications devoted to social and humanitarian aspects of biobanking and Russian experience of ...

The physician, said Henry Sigerist in 1940, has been acquiring an increasingly social role. For centuries, however, codes of medical ethics have concentrated on proper behavior toward individual patients and almost ignored the doctor's responsibilities to society. Major health service reforms have come principally from motivated lay leadership and citizen groups. Private physicians have been la...

The purpose of this paper is to present an understanding of business ethics based on a theory of intemal social criticism. Internal social criticism focuses on how members of a business organization debate the meanings of their shared traditions for the purpose of locating and correcting hypocrisy. Organizations have thick moral cultures that allow them to be self-governing moral communities. B...

This Essay addresses the negative impact of human cloning on the family, and argues further that market incentives to develop and implement cloning techniques exploit and exacerbate socioeconomic inequities. It suggests that cloning should be prohibited internationally and examines possible routes to that aim. To begin with, it offers some reflections on the nature of moral argument, and on the...

The issue of animal treatment has emerged as a major social concern over the past three decades. This ramified in a new ethic for animal treatment that goes beyond concern about cruelty and attempts to eliminate animal pain and suffering, whatever its source. This is evidenced by laws governing animal research in many countries. Insofar as toxicology can entail significant and prolonged animal ...

The new phenomenon of clinical ethics is analyzed from a role theoretic perspective that differentiates consulting, teaching, watching, and witnessing. Teaching and consulting are seen as main role alternatives in clinical ethics practice, with watching and witnessing defining transitional states that reveal the complexity of clinical ethics. The problem of the legitimation of clinical ethics i...