Customer Reviews

Bioethics: An Anthology (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Blackwells Anthology on Bioethics provides a strong material based support for courses in Bioethics or applied Philopsophy. It's two best features are that it contains the articles that most Bioethics courses will require you to read (Response to Purdy, for example) and yet most of the articles are in easy to understand language and require little or no previous knowledge. Also, far from being the dry tomes one associates with philosophical essays, the articles are genuinely engaging.

There are a few articles where if you haven't read Kant or Mill before you might be stuck, but most are easy to read and some entries are written by lay people about their experiences, including one mans suicide note as an argument for euthanasia and a couples experiences of IVF.

The editorial really helps to highlight the issues in the book and it is arranged in an acessible format, so that one can skip areas that aren't of interest.

Useful to students or acaedemics (in Medicine or Philosophy) and fascinating for anyone who wants to look into this area.

An insight on issues we're facing today in the medical field. Some are considered controversial and some conflicting with religions. The ideas are built on prima faciae basis that sometime neglects our core issue, which's the emotions and feelings we possess, uniquely as human beings.

The book, Bioethics: An Anthology, sure gives me all the ground work material that I need in my pursuit of research in Bioethics. I just made a trial attempt purchasing this book from Amazon.com; it worked. Will go for more books when I have money.
Sam Ujewe

Basically the title says it all. Ordered this book for my biomedical ethics class and it was everything that I needed.

The book is great but the condition poor. A good size chunk feel out of the book and the glue binding it seems to be losing its grip.

The book was sent to me in a timely fashion and is a great read for anyone choosing a career in medicine. The articles cover a variety of issues such as abortion, end of life decisions, euthanasia, gene therapy, and more. No matter your views of such matters, it teaches one to look at the issues from a different perspective.

This book has some great papers in it, but the editors really show their colors in the bioethics debate in the papers presented. For example the book presents a declaration by the Catholic Church denouncing euthanasia, but fails to present any of the background material that led to this declaration (or even references to it). It also presents a good number of papers that rely too heavily on anecdotes.

To get a feel for Singer and Kuhse's (two very big names of the field) opinons the book is great. To get a balanced treatment of the bioethics debate, the book fails.

A good collection of philosophy papers. I wasn't that interested in it only b/c I am not interested in philosophy enough to truly appreciate the book.