The Ethics of Screening in Health Care and Medicine

The Ethics of Screening in Health Care and Medicine PDF Author: Niklas Juth
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400720459
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Medical or health-oriented screening programs are amongst the most debated aspects of health care and public health practices in health care and public health ethics, as well as health policy discussions. In spite of this, most treatments of screening in the research literature restrict themselves to isolated scientific aspects, sometimes complemented by economic analyses or loose speculations regarding policy aspects. At the same time, recent advances in medical genetics and technology, as well as a rapidly growing societal focus on public health concerns, inspires an increase in suggested or recently started screening programs. This book involves an in-depth analysis of the ethical, political and philosophical issues related to health-oriented screening programs. It explores the considerations that arise when heath care interacts with other societal institutions on a large scale, as is the case with screening: What values may be promoted or compromised by screening programs? What conflicts of values do typically arise – both internally and in relation to the goals of health care, on the one hand, and the goals of public health and the general society, on the other? What aspects of screening are relevant for determining whether it should be undertaken or not and how it should be organised in order to remain defensible? What implications does the ethics of screening have for health care ethics as a whole? These questions are addressed by applying philosophical methods of conceptual analysis, as well as models and theories from moral and political philosophy, medical ethics, and public health ethics, to a large number of ongoing and proposed screening programs which makes this book the first comprehensive work on the ethics of screening. Analyses and suggestions are made that are of potential interest to health care staff, medical researchers, policy makers and the general public.

The Ethics of Screening in Health Care and Medicine

The Ethics of Screening in Health Care and Medicine PDF Author: Niklas Juth
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400720459
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Get Book Here

Book Description
Medical or health-oriented screening programs are amongst the most debated aspects of health care and public health practices in health care and public health ethics, as well as health policy discussions. In spite of this, most treatments of screening in the research literature restrict themselves to isolated scientific aspects, sometimes complemented by economic analyses or loose speculations regarding policy aspects. At the same time, recent advances in medical genetics and technology, as well as a rapidly growing societal focus on public health concerns, inspires an increase in suggested or recently started screening programs. This book involves an in-depth analysis of the ethical, political and philosophical issues related to health-oriented screening programs. It explores the considerations that arise when heath care interacts with other societal institutions on a large scale, as is the case with screening: What values may be promoted or compromised by screening programs? What conflicts of values do typically arise – both internally and in relation to the goals of health care, on the one hand, and the goals of public health and the general society, on the other? What aspects of screening are relevant for determining whether it should be undertaken or not and how it should be organised in order to remain defensible? What implications does the ethics of screening have for health care ethics as a whole? These questions are addressed by applying philosophical methods of conceptual analysis, as well as models and theories from moral and political philosophy, medical ethics, and public health ethics, to a large number of ongoing and proposed screening programs which makes this book the first comprehensive work on the ethics of screening. Analyses and suggestions are made that are of potential interest to health care staff, medical researchers, policy makers and the general public.

Assessing Genetic Risks

Assessing Genetic Risks PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309047986
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Raising hopes for disease treatment and prevention, but also the specter of discrimination and "designer genes," genetic testing is potentially one of the most socially explosive developments of our time. This book presents a current assessment of this rapidly evolving field, offering principles for actions and research and recommendations on key issues in genetic testing and screening. Advantages of early genetic knowledge are balanced with issues associated with such knowledge: availability of treatment, privacy and discrimination, personal decision-making, public health objectives, cost, and more. Among the important issues covered: Quality control in genetic testing. Appropriate roles for public agencies, private health practitioners, and laboratories. Value-neutral education and counseling for persons considering testing. Use of test results in insurance, employment, and other settings.

Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program

Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309096103
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was set up by Congress in 1990 to compensate people who have been diagnosed with specified cancers and chronic diseases that could have resulted from exposure to nuclear-weapons tests at various U.S. test sites. Eligible claimants include civilian onsite participants, downwinders who lived in areas currently designated by RECA, and uranium workers and ore transporters who meet specified residence or exposure criteria. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which oversees the screening, education, and referral services program for RECA populations, asked the National Academies to review its program and assess whether new scientific information could be used to improve its program and determine if additional populations or geographic areas should be covered under RECA. The report recommends Congress should establish a new science-based process using a method called "probability of causation/assigned share" (PC/AS) to determine eligibility for compensation. Because fallout may have been higher for people outside RECA-designated areas, the new PC/AS process should apply to all residents of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, and overseas US territories who have been diagnosed with specific RECA-compensable diseases and who may have been exposed, even in utero, to radiation from U.S. nuclear-weapons testing fallout. However, because the risks of radiation-induced disease are generally low at the exposure levels of concern in RECA populations, in most cases it is unlikely that exposure to radioactive fallout was a substantial contributing cause of cancer.

Public Health Ethics: Cases Spanning the Globe

Public Health Ethics: Cases Spanning the Globe PDF Author: Drue H. Barrett
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783319238463
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This Open Access book highlights the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in the practice of public health. It is also a tool to support instruction, debate, and dialogue regarding public health ethics. Although the practice of public health has always included consideration of ethical issues, the field of public health ethics as a discipline is a relatively new and emerging area. There are few practical training resources for public health practitioners, especially resources which include discussion of realistic cases which are likely to arise in the practice of public health. This work discusses these issues on a case to case basis and helps create awareness and understanding of the ethics of public health care. The main audience for the casebook is public health practitioners, including front-line workers, field epidemiology trainers and trainees, managers, planners, and decision makers who have an interest in learning about how to integrate ethical analysis into their day to day public health practice. The casebook is also useful to schools of public health and public health students as well as to academic ethicists who can use the book to teach public health ethics and distinguish it from clinical and research ethics.

Care Without Coverage

Care Without Coverage PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309083435
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.

Testing Treatments

Testing Treatments PDF Author: Imogen Evans
Publisher: Pinter & Martin Publishers
ISBN: 1905177488
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
This work provides a thought-provoking account of how medical treatments can be tested with unbiased or 'fair' trials and explains how patients can work with doctors to achieve this vital goal. It spans the gamut of therapy from mastectomy to thalidomide and explores a vast range of case studies.

Unequal Treatment

Unequal Treatment PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030908265X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 781

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Book Description
Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received. In Unequal Treatment, a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed. How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.

Oxford Textbook of Global Public Health

Oxford Textbook of Global Public Health PDF Author: Roger Detels
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019881013X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 1717

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Book Description
Sixth edition of the hugely successful, internationally recognised textbook on global public health and epidemiology, with 3 volumes comprehensively covering the scope, methods, and practice of the discipline

Responsibility in Health Care

Responsibility in Health Care PDF Author: G.J. Agich
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400978316
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Medicine is a complex social institution which includes biomedical research, clinical practice, and the administration and organization of health care delivery. As such, it is amenable to analysis from a number of disciplines and directions. The present volume is composed of revised papers on the theme of "Responsibility in Health Care" presented at the Eleventh Trans Disciplinary Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, which was held in Springfield, illinois on March 16-18, 1981. The collective focus of these essays is the clinical practice of medicine and the themes and issues related to questions of responsibility in that setting. Responsibility has three related dimensions which make it a suitable theme for an inquiry into clinical medicine: (a) an external dimension in legal and political analysis in which the State imposes penalties on individuals and groups and in which officials and governments are held accountable for policies; (b) an internal dimension in moral and ethical analysis in which individuals take into account the consequences of their actions and the criteria which bear upon their choices; and (c) a comprehensive dimension in social and cultural analysis in which values are ordered in the structure of a civilization ([8], p. 5). The title "Responsibility in Health Care" thus signifies a broad inquiry not only into the ethics of individual character and actions, but the moral foundations of the cultural, legal, political, and social context of health care generally.

The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics

The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics PDF Author: Anna C. Mastroianni
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190245212
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 939

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Book Description
Natural disasters and cholera outbreaks. Ebola, SARS, and concerns over pandemic flu. HIV and AIDS. E. coli outbreaks from contaminated produce and fast foods. Threats of bioterrorism. Contamination of compounded drugs. Vaccination refusals and outbreaks of preventable diseases. These are just some of the headlines from the last 30-plus years highlighting the essential roles and responsibilities of public health, all of which come with ethical issues and the responsibilities they create. Public health has achieved extraordinary successes. And yet these successes also bring with them ethical tension. Not all public health successes are equally distributed in the population; extraordinary health disparities between rich and poor still exist. The most successful public health programs sometimes rely on policies that, while improving public health conditions, also limit individual rights. Public health practitioners and policymakers face these and other questions of ethics routinely in their work, and they must navigate their sometimes competing responsibilities to the health of the public with other important societal values such as privacy, autonomy, and prevailing cultural norms. This Oxford Handbook provides a sweeping and comprehensive review of the current state of public health ethics, addressing these and numerous other questions. Taking account of the wide range of topics under the umbrella of public health and the ethical issues raised by them, this volume is organized into fifteen sections. It begins with two sections that discuss the conceptual foundations, ethical tensions, and ethical frameworks of and for public health and how public health does its work. The thirteen sections that follow examine the application of public health ethics considerations and approaches across a broad range of public health topics. While chapters are organized into topical sections, each chapter is designed to serve as a standalone contribution. The book includes 73 chapters covering many topics from varying perspectives, a recognition of the diversity of the issues that define public health ethics in the U.S. and globally. This Handbook is an authoritative and indispensable guide to the state of public health ethics today.