Reviews
A worthwhile addition to the core texts in the field of medical humanities. It is a valuable guide for teaching medical ethics and is worthy of a sequel.
Should serve as a resource not only for teachers of bioethics courses but also for those engaged in understanding the relationship of the humanities to medicine and to bioethics... In addition, the book may prompt serious discussion of popular films that address complex topics and stories that have bioethical implications.
Stimulating... each chapter has discussion questions that could be used equally well in the classroom or after watching a film at home with friends.
The twenty-one essays, together with an excellent introduction by Shapshay, are a welcome addition to the bioethics literature, making up for some of the deficiencies of the usual case studies found in most bioethics text books. Most of the major distinctions, problems, and arguments which make up the field of bioethics are presented in uniformly well written essays typically focusing on a single film. Each essay is accompanied by study questions and excellent bibliographies.
Bioethics at the Movies is a groundbreaking work that will enhance the teaching of bioethics in the humanities as well as in medical, nursing, and allied health.
Book Details
List of Contributors
Preface
Part I: On Babies, Test Tubes, and Sex the Old-Fashioned way
Chapter 1. "I give Them What The Want – Either an Orphan or an Abortion": The Cider House Rules and the Abortion
List of Contributors
Preface
Part I: On Babies, Test Tubes, and Sex the Old-Fashioned way
Chapter 1. "I give Them What The Want – Either an Orphan or an Abortion": The Cider House Rules and the Abortion Issues
Chapter 2. Reading Citizen Ruth Her Rights: Satire and Moral Realism in the Abortion Debate
Chapter 3. Homo Sapiens, Robots, and Persons in I, Robot and Bicentennial Man
Chapter 4. The Babe Vegetarians: Bioethics, Animal Minds, and Moral Methodology
Part II: The Quest for "Better" or Even "the Same" People
Chapter 5. "No Gene for Fate?": Luck, Harm, and Justice in Gattaca
Chapter 6. Lifting the Genetic Veil of Ignorance: Is There Anything Really Unjust About Gattacan Society?
Chapter 7. Multiplicity: A Study of Cloning and Personal Identity
Chapter 8. Is Ignorance Bliss? Star Trek: Nemesis, Cloning, and the Right to an Open Future
Part III: The Good Life
Chapter 9. "Blessed Are the Forgetful": The Ethics of Memory Deletion in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Chapter 10. Hacking the Mind: Existential Enhancement in Ghost in the Shell
Chapter 11. Commodification, Exploitation, and the Market for Transplant Organs: A Discussion of Dirty Pretty Things
Chapter 12. "She's DNR!" "She's Research!": Conflicting Role-Related Obligations in Wit
Part IV: Aging and the Good Death
Chapter 13. "He Just Got Old": Aging and Compassionate Care in Dad
Chapter 14. False Images: Reframing the End-of-Life Portrayal of Disability in Million Dollar Baby
Chapter 15. "I Can't Be Like This, Frankie, Not After What I've Done": Million Dollar Baby and the Value of Human Lives
Chapter 16. Providing Critical Care for a Big Fish at the End of Life: How Sidney Lumet and Tim Burton Cane Help Us Avoid Becoming the Next Terri Schiavo
Chapter 17. The Thanatoria of Soylent Green: On Reconciling the Good Life with the Good Death
Part V: The Role of Theory and Culture in Bioethics
Chapter 18. "If You Could Cure by Killing One Person, Wouldn't You Have To Do That?" Utilitarianism and Deontology in Extreme Measures
Chapter 19. Talk to Whom? Redefining Autonomy in Talk to Her
Chapter 20. Stars and Triangles: Controversial Bioethics in Contemporary Spanish Film
Chapter 21. Ikiru and Net-Casting in Intercultural Bioethics
Index