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Biomedical subjects

Courtney S Campbell

Publications and source records attributed to Courtney S Campbell.

14 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2004

Harvesting the living?: separating "brain death" and organ transplantation.

The chronic shortage of transplantable organs has reached critical proportions. In the wake of this crisis, some bioethicists have argued that there is sufficient public support to expand organ recovery through use of neocortical criteria of death or even pre-mortem organ retrieval. I present a typology of ways in which data gathered from the public can be misread or selectively used by bioethicists in service of an ideological or policy agenda, resulting in bad policy and bad ethics. Such risks should lead us to look at alternatives for increasing organ supplies short of expanding or abandoning the dead donor rule. The chronic problem of organ scarcity should prompt bioethicists to engage in constructive dialogue about the relation of the social sciences and bioethics, to examine the social malleability of the definition of death, and to revisit the question of the priority of organ transplants in the overall package of healthcare benefits provided to most, but not all, citizens.

Bioethics↗
PubMed1998

Religion and the body in medical research.

Religious discussion of human organs and tissues has concentrated largely on donation for therapeutic purposes. The retrieval and use of human tissue samples in diagnostic, research, and education contexts have, by contrast, received very little direct theological attention. Initially undertaken at the behest of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, this essay seeks to explore the theological and religious questions embedded in nontherapeutic use of human tissue. It finds that the "donation paradigm" typically invoked in religious discourse to justify uses of the body for therapeutic reasons is inadequate in the context of nontherapeutic research, while the "resource paradigm" implicit in scientific discourse presumes a reductionist account of the body that runs contrary to important religious values about embodiment. The essay proposes a "contribution paradigm" that provides a religious perspective within which research on human tissue can be both justified and limited.

Advisory Committees↗
PubMed1994

Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom, Ronald Dworkin.

As a teacher of biomedical ethics, I have constantly sought a method to motivate my students to engage in meaningful moral debate on the controversial issues of abortion and euthanasia, without risking a shouting match (as happened on one occasion). The moral views are so personalized and polarized that silence often displaces discourse. Ronald Dworkin's masterful Life's Dominion offers an innovative and insightful way through this impasse by identifying moral commitments shared by persons with different conclusions. His argument begins with "conservative" premises and winds up with "liberal" conclusions. It is a philosophical and constitutional analysis of the meaning of life and death that draws on substantive religious values. In so doing, Dworkin suggests an approach that could alter the adversarial and even violent nature of our cultural debate about the ending of life towards a more dialogic and tolerant, but not indifferent, mode....

Abortion, Induced↗
PubMed1992

It never dies: assessing the Nazi analogy in bioethics.

... As should be evident from the foregoing analysis, I have significant reservations about the moral utility of the Nazi analogy in debates over bioethics issues. Nevertheless, I am unable to dismiss its force entirely. I want to suggest that the real threat to the moral and human values expressed by the analogy will come not from responsibly formulated and clearly articulated proposals that undergo debate and scrutiny in the public forum, and whose practical impact in a democratic society is limited by institutional review and procedural safeguards. My concern instead is with the psychology of moral distancing, in which moral conscience is compartmentalized from vocational interests, such as the pursuit of scientific knowledge through biomedical research. It is the kind of psychology that Robert Jay Lifton has referrred to as "doubling: the division of the self into two functioning wholes, so that a part-self acts as an entire self," and which Lifton believes enabled the transformation of physicians from healers to killers in Nazi Germany....

Bioethical Issues↗
PubMedDate not supplied

To die in Wa.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Advance Directives↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Theology, religious traditions, and bioethics.

The social and medical ethos within which bioethics emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s was constituted in part by religious questions and religious thinkers. However, this identifiably religious influence on bioethics subsequently seemed to decline. How has this diminished impact come about, and what significance, if any, does it hold for the ways we now do bioethics? What difference, finally, do religious perspectives make for bioethics? These were the overarching questions that led the Hastings Center to initiate a research project on the relation of Religion and Bioethics, culminating in this special supplement to the Hastings Center Report.

Bioethics↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Religion and moral meaning in bioethics.

Courtney S. Campbell observes that the practical dilemmas of bioethics often presuppose common questions of meaning about human nature, suffering, dying, and human destiny that are central to religious traditions.

Altruism↗