Author: Erik Parens
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801883059
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
This volume explores the ethical and social issues raised by the recent proliferation of surgical techniques aimed at making children appear more normal. Using three cases -- involving surgeries to correct ambiguous genitalia of children who are intersexed, surgeries to lengthen the limbs of children who are dwarfs, and surgeries to eliminate craniofacial abnormalities such as cleft lip and palate -- Eric Parens deepens our understanding of the debate surrounding surgical interventions in children.
Author: Erik Parens
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9780801890901
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Patrick, Nichola Rumsey, Emily Sullivan Sanford, Tari D. Topolski
Author: Erik Parens
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190211741
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
When bioethicists debate the ethics of using technologies like surgery and pharmacology to shape our selves, they are debating what it means for human beings to flourish. They are debating what makes animals like us truly happy, and whether the technologies at issue will bring us closer to or farther from such happiness. The positions that participants adopt in debates regarding such ancient and fundamental questions are often polarized, and cannot help but be deeply personal. It is no wonder that these debates are sometimes acrimonious. How can critics of and enthusiasts about technological self- transformation move forward in the midst of polarizing arguments? Based on his experience as a scholar at The Hastings Center, the oldest free-standing bioethics research institute in the world, Erik Parens proposes a habit of thinking, which he calls Binocular thinking lets us benefit from the insights that are visible from the stance of the enthusiast, who emphasizes that using technology to creatively transform our selves will make us happier, and to benefit from the insights that are visible from the stance of the critic, who emphasizes that learning to let ourselves be will make us happier. Because these debates ultimately entail critics and enthusiasts giving justifications for their own ways of being in the world, they entail the exchange of more than just impartial reasons. In the throes of our passion to make our case, we exaggerate our insights and all-too-often fall into the conceptual traps that our languages constantly set for us: Are human beings by nature creators or creatures? Are technologies morally neutral or value- laden? Is disability a medical or a social phenomenon? Indeed, are we free or determined? Parens explains how participating in these debates helped him articulate a habit of thinking, which is better at benefiting from the insights embedded in both poles of those binaries than was the habit of thinking he broug
Author: Janet Saltzman Chafetz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387362185
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 626
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Book Description
During the past three decades, feminist scholars have successfully demonstrated the ubiq uity and omnirelevance of gender as a sociocultural construction in virtually all human collectivities, past and present. Intrapsychic, interactional, and collective social processes are gendered, as are micro, meso, and macro social structures. Gender shapes, and is shaped, in all arenas of social life, from the most mundane practices of everyday life to those of the most powerful corporate actors. Contemporary understandings of gender emanate from a large community of primarily feminist scholars that spans the gamut of learned disciplines and also includes non-academic activist thinkers. However, while in corporating some cross-disciplinary material, this volume focuses specifically on socio logical theories and research concerning gender, which are discussed across the full array of social processes, structures, and institutions. As editor, I have explicitly tried to shape the contributions to this volume along several lines that reflect my long-standing views about sociology in general, and gender sociology in particular. First, I asked authors to include cross-national and historical material as much as possible. This request reflects my belief that understanding and evaluating the here-and-now and working realistically for a better future can only be accomplished from a comparative perspective. Too often, American sociology has been both tempero- and ethnocentric. Second, I have asked authors to be sensitive to within-gender differences along class, racial/ethnic, sexual preference, and age cohort lines.
Author: Sarah Elliston
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135427992
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 565
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Book Description
Topical and compelling, this volume provides an excellent re-evaluation of the ‘best interests’ test in the healthcare arena; the ways in which it has developed, the inherent difficulties in its use and its interpretation in legal cases concerning the medical care of children. Comprehensively covering both the English and Scottish position within the context of the European Convention of human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the author examines a wide range of healthcare situations, from the commonly occurring to the unusual, offering a detailed analysis of legislation, case law, cases and their implications. It includes discussions on: the extent to which a child’s body can be examined, operated on and affected by medicines, devices or procedures intended to bring about medical change the appropriate scope of parental choice and authority and at what stage of their development children should be allowed to make their own decisions the response to situations where the interests of children may be in conflict – the cases of conjoined twins or the donation of organs to siblings. This work is a key resource for postgraduates and researchers working and studying in the fields of law, healthcare and medicine.
Author: Ellen K. Feder
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253012325
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
A philosopher offers a framework for the treatment of intersex children, and a moral argument for responsibility to them and their families. Putting the ethical tools of philosophy to work, Ellen K. Feder seeks to clarify how we should understand “the problem” of intersex. Adults often report that medical interventions they underwent as children to “correct” atypical sex anatomies caused them physical and psychological harm. Proposing a philosophical framework for the treatment of children with intersex conditions—one that acknowledges the intertwined identities of parents, children, and their doctors—Feder presents a persuasive moral argument for collective responsibility to these children and their families. “In a voice both urgent and nuanced, Feder squarely faces the complexities that accompany the care of people with atypical sex anatomies in medical science. . . . Rich with cross-discipline potential, Feder’s engaging argument should provide a new approach for doctors and parents caring for children with atypical sex anatomy.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Feder’s book is a welcome injection of new ideas into feminist scholarship on intersex, post-Consensus Statement era.” —Women’s Review of Books “Is a work of philosophy capable of bringing insightful new perspectives or illuminating and forceful arguments to an urgent social matter so as truly to effect a felt change in the lives of people concerned by it? Feder’s book is capable of this effect. As such, it takes the risk of calling forth a new public, or a new readership, and so is a work whose appeal could well be ahead of its time. But its time should be here.” —International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics “Making Sense of Intersex significantly enhances our understanding of intersex and the ethical issues involved in medical practice more generally.” —Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal
Author: Maria Cristina Murano
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
ISBN: 917685115X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 83
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Book Description
Several studies have argued that there is a correlation between short stature and negative experiences and characteristics, such as social discrimination, economic disadvantage, health problems (especially for men). The idea that short men have a disadvantage in social interactions and in partner choices is also widespread in popular culture and common knowledge. It is now possible to use recombinant human growth hormone (hGH) to treat children with idiopathic short stature (ISS), namely children who are shorter than average for unknown medical reasons. Critics argue that there is a lack of evidence of both psychological distress caused by short stature and the efficacy of the treatment in increasing children’s well-being. This controversy is reflected in international drug evaluations: while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US granted marketing authorisation for hGH for children with ISS in 2003, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) refused it in 2007. The research presented here had two aims: first, to identify and analyse the norms, values and assumptions about short stature and the use of hGH treatment for children with ISS, found within sociocultural, philosophical and regulatory discussions of these, and within narrated lived experiences of short stature. Second, to critically and reflectively discuss how these analyses contribute to bioethical debates on the use of hGH treatment for children with ISS. It employs what it calls a critical paediatric bioethics theoretical approach, which deems as important to carefully analyse different reasoning, conceptualisations and arguments around the object of study, through a self-reflective analysis that is also sceptical about other forms of problematisation, and that combines philosophical analyses while being open to social implications and drawing upon empirical methods. The first article proposes a critical understanding of medicalisation as both a concept and a phenomenon, and explores what insights such critical understanding brings to ethical discussions about hGH for ISS. It argues that three main ethical issues concern the medicalisation of short stature: the downplayed role of the qualitative dimension of short stature, the justification of the treatment (as sometimes based on uncritically assumed social beliefs and unrealistic parental expectations), and possible misconduct of stakeholders. The second article examines the arguments for and against granting marketing authorisation of hGH treatment for the indication of ISS presented in selected FDA and EMA documents. It combines argumentative analysis with an approach to policy analysis called ‘what’s the problem represented to be’ and focuses on underlying assumptions and presuppositions about short stature and hGH treatment for ISS. It then discusses these arguments through the relational, experiential and cultural understandings of disability, and argues that the choice about whether to give hGH is not merely a choice based on efficacy and safety, but requires an examination of the values that we transmit by that choice. The third article examines how and why attendance to lived experiences of height is needed in bioethical and biomedical discussions of hGH treatment for children with ISS. It first describes what it defines as the ‘problem-oriented’ approach to the debate about hGH treatment for children with ISS. It then offers a sociophenomenological analysis of whether and, if so, when and how, height matters to the interviewed people in the Netherlands who are shorter than average without any known medical reasons. The sociophenomenological analysis shows the richness of meanings of lived experiences of short stature that cannot be captured by the problem-oriented approach, and suggests complementing clinical practices with narrative approaches. This research contributes to the ethical debate about using hGH for children with ISS, setting a critical gaze onto the social perception of short stature, highlighting some ethical challenges met by stakeholders involved at different levels (such as families, medical professionals and policy makers), and providing new insights into how to address these ethical issues. It is, therefore, of interest to stakeholders, bioethicists and lay people willing to explore alternative ways to address such bioethical dilemmas, and other paediatric interventions that aim to normalise children’s bodily characteristics.
Author: Tom Shakespeare
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134577591
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
Over the last forty years, the field of disability studies has emerged from the political activism of disabled people. In this challenging review of the field, leading disability academic and activist Tom Shakespeare argues that disability research needs a firmer conceptual and empirical footing. This new edition is updated throughout, reflecting Shakespeare’s most recent thinking, drawing on current research, and responding to controversies surrounding the first edition and the World Report on Disability, as well as incorporating new chapters on cultural disability studies, personal assistance, sexuality, and violence. Using a critical realist approach, Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited promotes a pluralist, engaged and nuanced approach to disability. Key topics discussed include: dichotomies – going beyond dangerous polarizations such as medical model versus social model to achieve a complex, multi-factorial account of disability identity - the drawbacks of the disability movement's emphasis on identity politics bioethics - choices at the beginning and end of life and in the field of genetic and stem cell therapies relationships – feminist and virtue ethics approaches to questions of intimacy, assistance and friendship. This stimulating and accessible book challenges disability studies orthodoxy, promoting a new conceptualization of disability and fresh research agenda. It is an invaluable resource for researchers and students in disability studies and sociology, as well as professionals, policy makers and activists.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1164
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Book Description
Author: Brian Watermeyer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041568160X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
This innovative work argues that a psychological framework of disability is an essential part of developing a more cohesive disability movement. Presenting conceptual ideas which describe psychological dynamics confronting disabled people in an exclusionary and prejudiced world, this volume is an important contribution to the literature. It will interest students and researchers of disability studies.
