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Cover image of Bioethics in America
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Bioethics in America

Origins and Cultural Politics

M. L. Tina Stevens

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In Bioethics in America, Tina Stevens challenges the view that the origins of the bioethics movement can be found in the 1960s, a decade mounting challenges to all variety of authority. Instead, Stevens sees bioethics as one more product of a "centuries-long cultural legacy of American ambivalence toward progress," and she finds its modern roots in the responsible science movement that emerged following detonation of the atomic bomb.

Rather than challenging authority, she says, the bioethics movement was an aid to authority, in that it allowed medical doctors and researchers to proceed on...

In Bioethics in America, Tina Stevens challenges the view that the origins of the bioethics movement can be found in the 1960s, a decade mounting challenges to all variety of authority. Instead, Stevens sees bioethics as one more product of a "centuries-long cultural legacy of American ambivalence toward progress," and she finds its modern roots in the responsible science movement that emerged following detonation of the atomic bomb.

Rather than challenging authority, she says, the bioethics movement was an aid to authority, in that it allowed medical doctors and researchers to proceed on course while bioethicists managed public fears about medicine's new technologies. That is, the public was reassured by bioethical oversight of biomedicine; in reality, however, bioethicists belonged to the same mainstream that produced the doctors and researchers whom the bioethicists were guiding.

Reviews

Reviews

An interesting and provocative book, well worth reading for the issues it raises as well as for the historical analysis of the bioethics movement.

Bioethics in America merits our attention. It will encourage additional reflection on the sources and meaning of the rise of this new profession dedicated to moral arbitration.

Stevens has a pithy prose style and a healthy willingness to challenge received wisdom.

A major contribution to the history of bioethics.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
5.5
x
8.5
Pages
224
ISBN
9780801874482
Table of Contents

Prologue. The Tradition of Ambivalence
Chapter 1. The Culture of Post-atomic Ambivalence
Chapter 2 "Leaders of Leaders": The Hastings Center, 1969 to the Present
Chapter 3. Redefining Death in America

Prologue. The Tradition of Ambivalence
Chapter 1. The Culture of Post-atomic Ambivalence
Chapter 2 "Leaders of Leaders": The Hastings Center, 1969 to the Present
Chapter 3. Redefining Death in America, 1968
Chapter 4. "Sleeping Beauty": Karen Ann Quinlan and the Rise of Bioethics in America
Epilogue. Conclusion and Outlook

Author Bio