Review - The Bioethics Reader
Editors' Choice
by Ruth Chadwick, Helga Kuhse, Willem A. Landman, Udo Schuklenk, and Peter Singer (Editors)
Blackwell, 2007
Review by J. Jeremy Wisnewski, Ph.D.
Feb 12th 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 7)

The Bioethics Reader is a snapshot of some of the changes in bioethics research that have occurred over the past two decades. Assembled by the editors of the journals Bioethics and Developing World Bioethics, this book collects some of the most innovative and important contributions to the field that have been published in these two journals. The book features sections on classic and more recent areas of research within the broad domain of bioethics. In addition to sections on some perennial issues (the professional-patient relationship, beginning of life and end of life issues), there are also sections on more recent developments in the field (genetics, global health care, the ethics of drug development and allocation), as well as a section on meta-bioethics which offers some divergent analyses of what is involved (or ought to be involved) in the enterprise.

Like other collections of previously published essays, this collection will not offer much to the expert in bioethics research. Such a researcher will already be quite familiar with all (or most) of the articles appearing in the book. The uses of a collection like this one, though, can nevertheless be rather significant. The collection provides an overview of themes that have developed in the bioethics literature in the recent past: one cannot help but notice ethical inquiry’s movement from the domain of individual patients to the level of genetic and multicultural analysis. In this respect, The Bioethics Reader provides us with an interesting historical document—one that serves to introduce the uninitiated to some of the hot areas of interest to those working in contemporary bioethics.

This collection might also effectively be used in classroom settings. The articles collected in it are uniformly thoughtful and provocative. They are one and all worth reading, and include contributions from some top philosophers (e.g. Jeff McMahan, John Harris, Mary Warnock, and Dan Brock, to name only a few).

The Bioethics Reader, then, is a nice synthesis of some developments in the field that will be useful to those who dabble in bioethics, or who are interested in seeing what new areas of research have emerged alongside new technological advances and growing globalization. It is a nice supplement to some of the more traditional collections of contributions to this growing field.

© 2008 J. Jeremy Wisnewski

J. Jeremy Wisnewski, PhD, Hartwick College