Religious Perspectives on Human Vulnerability in Bioethics

✍ Scribed by Joseph Tham, Alberto Garcia, Gonzalo Miranda (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 260
• Series: Advancing Global Bioethics 2
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

With the advance of biomedicine, certain individuals and groups are vulnerable because of their incapacities to defend themselves. The International Bioethics Committee as a UNESCO working group has for the last several years dedicated to deepen this principle of human vulnerability and personal integrity. This book serves to supplement this effort with a religious perspective given a great number of the world’s population is affiliated with some religious traditions. While there is diversity within each of these traditions, all of them carry in them the mission to protect the weak, the underprivileged, and the poor. Thus, here presented is a collection of papers written by bioethics experts from six major world religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism—who were gathered to discuss the meaning and implications of the principle of vulnerability in their respective traditions.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xxii
Introduction: The Principle of Vulnerability: Meeting Ground of Six Religions....Pages 1-7
Front Matter....Pages 9-9
Vulnerability: How did the principle Come About?....Pages 11-14
The Principle of Vulnerability in the UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights....Pages 15-28
Vulnerability: Considerations on the Appropriate Use of the Term in Bioethics....Pages 29-37
Front Matter....Pages 39-39
Vulnerability, Compassion, and Ethical Responsibility: A Buddhist Perspective on the Phenomenology of Illness and Health....Pages 41-52
The Ethical and the Legal Aspects of Vulnerability in the Christian Perspective....Pages 53-60
Family as First Bulwark for the Vulnerable: Confucian Perspectives on the Anthropology and Ethics of Human Vulnerability....Pages 61-77
Between Tradition and Modernity: Bioethics, Human Vulnerability and Social Change....Pages 79-94
Human Vulnerability in Islam....Pages 95-102
Reflections on Human Vulnerability and the Rabbinic Perspective on Medical Ethics....Pages 103-114
Front Matter....Pages 115-115
Buddhist Perspective on Four Vulnerable Groups: Children, Women, the Elderly and the Disabled....Pages 117-133
A Christian Consideration of Human Vulnerability in Healthcare and Research....Pages 135-141
Christian Perspective on Vulnerable Groups: The Elderly and the Disabled....Pages 143-151
Health Care and Human Vulnerability: A Confucian Perspective....Pages 153-164
Hindu Perspective on Vulnerable Groups: Children, Women, the Elderly and the Disabled....Pages 165-174
Islamic Perspectives on Vulnerable Groups....Pages 175-191
Jewish Perspective on Vulnerable Groups: The Elderly and the Disabled....Pages 193-202
Jewish Perspective on Vulnerable Groups: Women and Children....Pages 203-214
Lessons Learned....Pages 215-224
Appendices....Pages 225-243
Back Matter....Pages 245-251

✦ Subjects

Ethics; Theory of Medicine/Bioethics; Religious Studies