Latest Health & Wellness Research
Genetic Engineering: Tinkering with Life?
“Genetic Engineering: Tinkering with Life?” in Hayrettin Kardestunger (ed.) Social Consequences of Engineering (San Francisco: Boyd & Fraser Publishing Company, 1979), pp. 228-244.
A Communitarian Approach: A Viewpoint on the Study of the Legal, Ethical and Policy Considerations Raised by DNA Tests and Databases
This article seeks to outline a viewpoint on the study of the legal, ethical and policy considerations raised by DNA tests and databases (from here on, DNA usages). It does not delve into the specifics involved. It outlines a way of thinking that has proven productive elsewhere and seems promising in dealing with DNA usages in the United States, but little more. Given that this essay is about a communitarian approach that draws on specific communitarian values, I turn next to briefly present the approach here followed.
No State Intrusions
When my mother-in-law could not take it any more (her cancer had turned her leg into one huge sore, and her pain was unbearable), my wife reluctantly called in a physician who was also a family friend. Dr. L. explained that it was against the law for him to help my mother-in-law, who had battled melanoma for 13 months with a quiet dignity, to end her life.
A Communitarian Perspective on Sex and Sexuality
Both religious and liberal secular thinking offer comprehensive approaches to considering the place of the sexual drive in our personal lives and communities. What has communitarian thinking to offer? How does it compare to these other bodies of thought, especially to religious ones?
On Protecting Children from Speech
When freedom of speech comes into conflict with the protection of children, how should this conflict be resolved? What principles should guide such deliberations? Can one rely on parents and educators (and more generally on voluntary means) to protect children from harmful cultural materials (such as Internet pornography and violent movies) or is government intervention necessary?
Organ Donation: A Communitarian Approach
Recently, various suggestions have been made to respond to the increasingly great shortage of organs by paying for them. Because of the undesirable side effects of such approaches (commodification, injustice, and costs), a communitarian approach should be tried first.
Public Health Law: A Communitarian Perspective
American society has often favored individual rights disproportionately over the common good. In the aftermath of September 11, there is a need to readjust our criteria to allow for the strengthening of security, public safety, and public health policies.
Medical Records: Enhancing Privacy, Preserving the Common Good
The privacy of medical records, which contain highly intimate information that people legitimately are keen to keep from others, often is violated.
HIV Testing of Infants: Privacy and Public Health
Congress is expecting to hear, by September 1998, about the results of a study it charged the Institute of Medicine to conduct.
Full text here.
Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies
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