This chapter contains sections titled: Problems and Arguments Religion and Bioethics: A Distinctive Contribution? Religion, Bioethics, and Liberal Society References Further reading.

Before asking what U.S. bioethics might learn from a more comprehensive and more nuanced understanding of Islamic religion, history, and culture, a prior question is, how should bioethics think about religion? Two sets of commonly held assumptions impede further progress and insight. The first involves what “religion” means and how one should study it. The second is a prominent philosophical view of the role of religion in a diverse, democratic society. To move beyond these (...) assumptions, it helps to view religion as lived experience as well as a body of doctrine and to see that religious differences and controversies should be welcomed in the public square of a diverse democratic society rather than merely tolerated. (shrink)

Religious voices were important in the early days of the contemporary field of bioethics but have now become decidedly less prominent. This is unfortunate because religious elements are essential parts of the most foundational aspects of bioethics. The problem is that there is an incommensurability between religious language and languages of public discourse such as the “public reason” of John Rawls. To eliminate what is unique in religious language is to lose something essential. This paper examines the reasons (...) for the marginalization of religion in bioethics, shows the limitations of Rawls’s notion of public reason, and argues for a more robust role for theology in articulating a new language for public discourse in bioethics. (shrink)

This paper places “Islam and bioethics” within the framework of “religion and science” discourse. It thus may be seen as a complement to the paper by Henk ten Have () with which this thematic section in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science opens, which places “Islam and bioethics” in the context of contemporary bioethics. It turns out that in Zygon there have been more submitted articles on Islam and bioethics than on any other Islam-related (...) topic. This may be a consequence of the global nature of the bioethical issues, driven by advancement in science and technology, which allows for conversation across cultural and religious boundaries even when the normative references and argumentative methods are tradition-specific. (shrink)

“Bioethics began in religion, but religion has faded from bioethics.” This interpretation is commonplace among many who have an opinion on bioethics. This chapter examines this.

The domains of religious doctrine and practice provide ground for double bind analysis, particularly as applied to race, religion, and bioethics. In these spheres, reconciling church doctrine with social or medical practice is often challenging; the demands from each sphere are unique and sometimes irreconcilable. This chapter uses double bind theory as a framework to engage in a dialogue concerning race, religion, and bioethics. It offers a dialogue that scrutinizes conservative religious thought in what is colloquially (...) known as the “black church” regarding the challenges of medical ethics and race. (shrink)

Linguistic capital is what is at issue when we ask who can speak for a religion. But asking who has the linguistic capital to speak for a religious community in public policy forums is different from asking who has linguistic capital within the religious community. The first question forces us to examine the acquisition of linguistic capital in three separate — yet overlapping — fields of social discourse: academia, religion, and government. Each of these requires distinctive ways of (...) earning the necessary social capital to be authorized to speak. The issue of who has the status to speak for a religion in a political forum is essentially a question of what types of linguistic capital gained in one field are deemed legal tender within another field. (shrink)

This volume engages in conversation with the thinking and work of Max Charlesworth as well as the many questions, tasks and challenges in academic and public life that he posed. It addresses philosophical, religious and cultural issues, ranging from bioethics to Australian Songlines, and from consultation in a liberal society to intentionality. The volume honours Max Charlesworth, a renowned and celebrated Australian public intellectual, who founded the journal Sophia, and trained a number of the present heirs to both Sophia (...) and academic disciplines as they were further developed and enhanced in Australia: Indigenous Australian studies, philosophy of religion, the study of the tension between tradition and modernity, phenomenology and existentialism, hermeneutics, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of science that is responsive to environmental issues. (shrink)

Modern medical ethics developed in America after mid-century chiefly at theological schools, but discourse on bioethics soon moved to the pluralist-secular settings of the academy and the clinic, where it acquired a philosophical and intentionally non-religious cast. An effort was made, on the grounds of ‘liberal culture’ and ‘late Enlightenment rationality’ to find a framework for inquiry which aspired to the universal. Today, while that language persists, it coexists with, challenges, and is challenged by forms of ethical analysis and (...) advocacy which take into consideration the ‘thickness’ of complicating narrative and reasoning based in the many religious traditions. It has become incumbent upon advocates of those traditions to propose ‘publicly accessible’ argument. Keywords: bioethics, church, religion, theology CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Organ transplantation from living related donors in Bangladesh first began in October 1982, and became commonplace in 1988. Cornea transplantation from posthumous donors began in 1984 and living related liver and bone marrow donor transplantation began in 2010 and 2014 respectively. The Human Organ Transplantation Act officially came into effect in Bangladesh on 13th April 1999, allowing organ donation from both brain-dead and related living donors for transplantation. Before the legislation, religious leaders issued fatwa, or religious rulings, in favor of (...) organ transplantation. The Act was amended by the Parliament on 8th January, 2018 with the changes coming into effect shortly afterwards on 28th January. However, aside from a few posthumous corneal donations, transplantation of vital organs, such as the kidney, liver, heart, pancreas, and other body parts or organs from deceased donors, has remained absent in Bangladesh. The major question addressed in this article is why the transplantation of vital organs from deceased donors is absent in Bangladesh. In addition to the collection of secondary documents, interviews were conducted with senior transplant physicians, patients and their relatives, and the public, to learn about posthumous organ donation for transplantation. Interviews were also conducted with a medical student and two grief counselors to understand the process of counseling the families and obtaining consent to obtain posthumous cornea donations from brain-dead patients. An interview was conducted with a professional anatomist to understand the processes behind body donation for the purposes of medical study and research. Their narrative reveals that transplant physicians may be reticent to declare brain death as the stipulations of the 1999 act were unclear and vague. This study finds that Bangladeshis have strong family ties and experience anxiety around permitting separating body parts of dead relatives for organ donation for transplantation, or donating the dead body for medical study and research purposes. Posthumous organ donation for transplantation is commonly viewed as a wrong deed from a religious point of view. Religious scholars who have been consulted by the government have approved posthumous organ donation for transplantation on the grounds of necessity to save lives even though violating the human body is generally forbidden in Islam. An assessment of the dynamics of biomedicine, religion and culture leads to the conclusion that barriers to posthumous organ donation for transplantation that are perceived to be religious may actually stem from cultural attitudes. The interplay of faith, belief, religion, social norms, rituals and wider cultural attitudes with biomedicine and posthumous organ donation and transplantation is very complex. Although overcoming the barriers to organ donation for transplantation is challenging, initiation of transplantation of vital organs from deceased donors is necessary within Bangladesh. This will ensure improved healthcare outcomes, prevent poor people from being coerced into selling their organs to rich recipients, and protect the solidarity and progeny of Bangladeshi families. (shrink)

The only complete study of Buber as a political thinker. Shed new light upon Buber's I Thou, while also attempting to understand Buber's Zionist thought and activity in a new and fresh manner.

Engelhardt invites readers to understand what it means to live in a world after God, where questions of sin and virtue have been replaced with life-and-death-style choices. After God provides a dark prophetic vision. But there is still hope. As Engelhardt argues, In this culture, children now grow up apart from and defended against a recognition of the God Who lives. They are nurtured in a social fabric that is structured so as to avoid a recognition of, much less an (...) encounter with, God. Nevertheless... a traditional Christianity has endured, even though its morality and bioethics have become ever more strongly counter-cultural. The source of this traditional Christian otherness over against the surrounding post-theistic culture lies in the origins of Christianity itself, in the Christianity of the Apostles and the Fathers, namely, in Orthodox Christianity. Against the tenor of the times, disregarding the animus to set traditional Christianity aside, and despite heretics prominent within its fold, Orthodox Christianity remains a light in a world after God. --! From back cover. (shrink)

Many Christian scholars, if not all of them, consider Genesis to be foundational texts of the Bible and the spring for all the other doctrines of the Scripture. Therefore, I'm considering the attempt to search and find arguments for cell therapy ethical issues in the fundamental text of Genesis as a challenging and educative task. Moreover, this could be the first step in analyzing the relationships between Christian religions and bioethics, in terms of finding reasonable decisions for ethical challenges, (...) raised by the current biomedical research. As for many other dilemmas of humanity, we have to recall the text of Genesis for analyzing the goodness or evilness of our actions in translational medicine, even though that is not the only way to get a reasonable ethical decision. My contribution is an essay that is trying to correlate the Genesis lessons with the needed arguments in deciding what could be good and what could be evil in the stem cell research, according to the religious convictions. The biggest challenges of biomedical research for Christian religions were due to the human cloning issue, made possible by the somatic cell nuclear transfer, but those challenges update the older debates on birth control pill, technologically assisted reproduction, or gene therapy. Issues related to in vitro fertilization, gene enhancement and gene therapy, human cell cloning, embryonic stem cell using, and chimera cell obtaining for research are being considered and related to the putative arguments extracted from the book of Genesis, describing the origins. As a matter of fact, I may conclude that the single way to reach a reasonable ethical decision in our society is to intersect ethics, science and theology and to engage large debates involving scientists, theologians, civil society representatives, ethicists (experts in applied ethics) and moral philosophers, having the two latest professionals as referees. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion and the Body in Medical ResearchCourtney S. Campbell (bio)AbstractReligious 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.The retrieval and use of human tissue samples for diagnostic, therapeutic, research, and educational purposes represent further developments in scientific study of the human body as a source of medical information. Following the completion of its examination of the ethical and policy issues pertaining to human cloning in the spring of 1997, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) returned to the set of questions for which it had been originally constituted, including ethical issues that arise in human subjects research. One issue that proved controversial for the human genetics subcommittee of NBAC was the scientific, philosophical, and legal status of tissue and other body parts (usually surgical specimens) that had been retrieved from patients (not research subjects) who had given general consent to the use of their body materials for research and educational purposes. The subcommittee addressed questions about the adequacy of general versus specific [End Page 275] consent, the scientific merits of identifiable versus anonymous samples and claims about patient confidentiality, and the justification for patient refusals and requests that the materials be returned to the patient or discarded rather than made available for scientific research. In an effort to better understand the ramifications of research on human tissue, the subcommittee commissioned several background papers that examined these questions from ethical, legal, research, and religious perspectives. What follows is a modified version of the report on religious considerations originally presented to the genetics subcommittee of NBAC.The central question examined in this article is whether tissue banking for purposes of research presents distinctive theological issues or prompts objections from religious communities or scholars. Religious discussion of human organs and tissues has focused largely on donation for therapeutic purposes (what I describe as the “donation paradigm”); hence, there is very little direct consideration of nontherapeutic uses of such tissue. It is possible, however, to describe implications and suggest inferences by considering (1) religious attitudes to the human body and to organs, tissues, and cells removed from the body, and (2) religious discussions of modes of transfer of body parts, such as donations, offerings, sales, and abandonment. By and large, this discussion will reflect themes that emerge from the central Western religious traditions, with some attention given to Eastern and Native perspectives.The Body: Religious Holism, Scientific Reductionism, Private PropertyThe human body as an organic totality has long been the subject of theological reflection and a symbol for religious communities. However, much less attention has been devoted to the religious status of organs, tissues, cells, and DNA. The reflection of religious scholars and communities on the status of body parts has been prompted by the necessity to confront practical questions in personal and public health and in communal life, such as justifications for surgery, autopsies, organ donation, or burial. Scientific and research interest in parts of the body can sometimes conflict with religious values about bodily integrity. Indeed, E. Richard Gold cites the “disparate claims of scientific investigation and religious belief on the body” as the exemplary case of incommensurate values regarding the body. According to Gold (1996, p. 149), “The body, from a scientific viewpoint, is a source of knowledge of physical development, aging, and disease. From a religious perspective, the body is understood [End Page 276] as a sacred object, being created in the image... (shrink)

Issues such as abortion, embryo research and euthanasia have been discussed exhaustively from the standpoint of Western philosophy and religion, but so far the voice of Buddhism has been little heard in the debate. Although widely respected for its benevolent and humanistic values, Buddhism has not so far shown how its ethical principles can be applied in a consistent manner to contemporary moral dilemmas. Drawing on both ancient and modern sources, this book sets out the basis of a Buddhist (...) response to the major ethical questions posed by modern medicine. (shrink)

The report produced by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission at the request of President Bill Clinton, titled Cloning Human Beings, provides a good example of the two-pronged approach to religion in bioethics. The report merits careful scrutiny precisely because of the deftness with which it appears to negotiate the thorny questions surrounding the role of religion in public policy. Analysis of the structure, arguments, and rhetoric of the report reveals the theoretical and practical inadequacy of the (...) currently reigning two-pronged approach to the role of religious perspectives in the field of bioethics. (shrink)

Muslim theologians, jurists, and healthcare workers have been addressing the challenges of modern biotechnology for years. Major textbooks on religion and bioethics cover Islam in one or two articles, offering only a general introduction to these important discussions. The five articles in this issue of the "Journal of Religious Ethics", originating from a conference at Pennsylvania State University, are unusual in the specificity of their topics-brain death, feeding tubes, sex selection, spiritual counseling, and organ transplantation-and in their engagement (...) with complex discussions in the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. In this essay, I introduce the five articles and consider two larger implications: the changing definition of the human person in light of biotechnological advances and the continuing importance of religious traditions, especially Islam, in legitimizing ethical responses to these advances. (shrink)

800x600 Normal 0 21 false false false RO X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Review of Mihaela Frunză, Expertiza etică și bioetica. Studii de caz (Ethical Expertise and Bioethics. Case Studies). Cluj-Napoca, Limes Publishing House, 2010.

Howard W. Jones, Jr.'s Personhood Revisited chronicles reproductive technology's debate-evoking history meanwhile exploring the ongoing moral dilemmas of the twenty-first century, including: personhood, in vitro fertilization, conjugal love, eugenics, cloning, stem cell research, and more. Balanced readings on each reproductive topic represent conflicting viewpoints from legal, religious, and scientific perspectives. And Jones' personal experiences, such as meetings with the Vatican, add a unique look into the highly political yet benevolent world of reproductive medicine. Author Howard W. Jones, Jr., alongside Robert (...) Edwards (winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine 2010), fertilized the first human eggs in vitro. Jones and his wife, Georgeanna Seegar Jones, established the first in vitro fertilization program in the United States, which went on to develop America's first test tube baby in 1981. Book jacket. (shrink)

In this issue, contributors engage Timothy Murphy’s proposal for irreligious bioethics over against religious bioethics. Two essays take opposing sides in the debate, while a third seeks middle ground. Another essay questions the meaning of the words “religion,” “irreligion,” and “secular.” The final essay examines the religious nature of human existence and its implications for the debate.

This paper considers what concept of accommodation is necessary to identify and address discrimination, disadvantages and disparities in such a way that the plurality of religious people with their beliefs, values and practices may be justly accommodated in healthcare. It evaluates threats to the possibility of such accommodation pertaining by considering what beliefs and practices might increase the risk of unjust discrimination against and disadvantage for religious people, whether as individuals or as groups; and the risk of disparities between the (...) care provided to religious people. The claim is that there is an important cluster of risks that are political in kind and emergent within philosophical bioethics. While not amounting (yet) to a trend, they are sufficiently threatening to a just civic life for patients and healthcare staff as to warrant scrutiny. After an Introductory Section 1, Section 2 evaluates a criticism of ‘accommodation’ and the apparently additional health-related requirements that those of religious faith demand, when compared with other people. It does so by comparing Lori Beaman's idea of agonism with that of a distinct and somewhat complementary approach in Jonathan Chaplin's political philosophy, before examining the role of established religion in setting the conditions for the accommodation of religion and belief in healthcare. Section 3 examines risks to such accommodation by engaging critically with three health-related instantiations of political philosophy that differ radically from both Beaman and Chaplin. A concluding Section 4 focusses on appropriate modes of communicating about religious and other beliefs in healthcare. (shrink)

Books have their origins in conversations and seek to extend and expand those conversations over time and with different audiences. The conversations that have culminated in this book were initially stimulated through a research project at The Hastings Center on the role of religious voices in the professional fields of bioethical inquiry. Those professional conversations have continued throughout my academic career as a member of various institutional ethics committees, organizational ethics task forces, and in local, state, and national public policy (...) settings. The professional context of bioethics conversations can sometimes miss the richness of conversations that occur in the classroom and with various communities, including family members, friends, and religious and civic communities. These conversations provide an experiential depth, a groundedness in the lives and stories of persons, which augments and corrects the professionalized perspectives. I have been particularly fortunate and appreciative of opportunities to bridge the academic and professional with the personalized and communal through conversations about the ethical commitments and moral culture cultivated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon). I was invited to develop an overview essay on "Bioethics in Mormonism" for the professional reference work, Encyclopedia of Bioethics (3rd ed., 2004), and some years later received my first invitation to make a presentation on "LDS Ethics" in an academic setting at the University of Virginia. This book is the outgrowth of these many conversations and seeks to advance my communal bridging. My aim in this book is to begin bridging these various intersections between the LDS religious community and its moral culture, the professional fields of bioethics, and practical decision-making. This work seeks to be a catalyst for expanding discourse within the interdisciplinary field of Mormon studies to include ethics and bioethics. Ethics has not been a well-developed area in Mormon studies, in contrast to studies in LDS history, theology, or literature. To remedy this oversight, I present a substantive interpretation of the sources, theological background, and moral principles of LDS ethics. The historical narratives and conceptual intertwining I offer of both bioethics and of LDS moral culture is intended to complement and expand the realm of Mormon studies. A further objective is to create opportunities for reciprocal dialogues between the bioethics community and LDS scholarship. This conversation has yet to occur within academic disciplines, professional communities, or in public policy deliberations. My exposition, analysis, and critiques will intertwine and contextualize LDS moral values and health care practices within the ethical inquiry undertaken in the broader professional scholarship of bioethics. My arguments will disclose some points of common ground as well as areas of divergence towards the end of establishing the LDS faith tradition as a community of moral discourse for the bioethics field and the healing professions (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, etc.) it informs. My claim is that given its emerging cultural prominence, LDS ethical scholarship should engage in bioethical literacy and bioethics should be LDS-literate. I am also engaged in an effort to initiate more reflective dialogues regarding LDS ethics and moral culture among LDS scholars, LDS health care professionals, and the interested general LDS reader. The focus of the book on the interrelationship of religion, ethics, medicine, and health care should present for these various audiences new opportunities for mindful reflection and creative scholarship on the ethical implications of faith commitments, the responsibilities of the healing professions, and religious dimensions of public policy and public bioethics. A religious community that is formed through narratives and practices of covenantal commitments of love of neighbor needs to have a robust discourse about its ethical character. I have understood my scholarship in biomedical ethics and in religious ethics through a linking metaphor of my moral culture, of medicine, and the law, of bearing witness. The witness offers moral realities, moral truths about the way things are, vocalizes and embodies moral experience, and prophetically critiques the hypocrisies of the powerful and their oppression of the vulnerable by offering a new story, a re-storying, of tradition and conventional practice. (shrink)

The proper role, if any, for religion-based arguments is a live and sometimes heated issue within the field of bioethics. The issue attracts heat primarily because bioethical analyses influence the outcomes of controversial court cases and help shape legislation in sensitive biopolicy areas. A problem for religious bioethicists who seek to influence biopolicy is that there is now widespread academic and public acceptance, at least within liberal democracies, that the state should not base its policies on any particular (...) religion’s metaphysical claims or esoteric moral system. In response, bioethicists motivated by religious concerns have adopted two identifiable strategies. Sometimes they rely on slippery-slope arguments that, sometimes at least, have empirically testable premises. A more questionable response is the manipulation and misuse of secular-sounding moral language, such as references to “human dignity,” and the plights of groups of people labeled “vulnerable.”. (shrink)

This chapter argues that ethics plays an extremely important role in decision making and lawmaking in bioethics issues. These decisions are not simple case-by-case judgments; rather, they rest upon deeply considered ethical opinions. It also discusses the implications of this epistemic grounding for bioethics and its use of case law materials as an ethical resource. Finally, since many people base their moral judgments on religious beliefs, the religious implications of this legal-moral relationship are considered.

What role should religion play in a religiously pluralistic liberal society? Public bioethics unavoidably raises this question in a particularly insistent fashion. As the 20 papers in this collection demonstrate, the issues are complex and multifaceted. The authors address specific and highly contested issues as assisted suicide, stem cell research, cloning, reproductive health, and alternative medicine as well as more general questions such as who legitimately speaks for religion in public bioethics, what religion can add (...) to our understanding of justice, and the value of faith-based contributions to healthcare. Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist viewpoints are represented. The first book to focus on the interface of religion and bioethics, this collection fills a significant void in the literature. (shrink)

This paper addresses the topic of bioethics in reproductive medicine from the perspective of the religious implications for the field. The assumption underlying the approach is that religion remains a factor that influences the field of bioethics even in a secularized postmodern society. The first part of the paper analyses the main bioethical issues which mark obstetrics and gynecology, uttering that the four basic principles of bioethics are available both in obstetrics and gynecology and must be (...) applied in association with the practitioner’s virtues. The second part of the paper focuses on the main directions that guide the debate on the presence of religion in the field of bioethics, with a special interest in their relevance for reproductive medicine. Despite the difficulties implied by the task of advocating for the place of religion at the secular table of deliberation in medical ethics, the relevance of religion for bioethics cannot be ignored. (shrink)

As America's debate over federal funding of embryonic stem cell research continues to deepen, it is increasingly characterized as a conflict between the objectivity of secular science and the cultural variability of traditional religion. Yet science alone, by the very limitations of its naturalistic methodology and domain of knowledge, is unable to draw its own moral boundaries. Through a careful consideration of the relationship between scientific knowledge and our most fundamental assumptions concerning the moral value of developing life, we (...) may discern the terms of a possible resolution to our current conflict. In May 2005, the President's Council on Bioethics issued a report "Alternative Sources of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells," that discusses four proposals for a technological means of obtaining pluripotent stem cells without the destruction of human embryos. Drawing on the principles laid out in this report we discuss one of these proposals, Altered Nuclear Transfer, as a way forward that can sustain social consensus while opening avenues for scientific advance. (shrink)

What role should religion play in a religiously pluralistic liberal society? Public bioethics unavoidably raises this question in a particularly insistent fashion. As the 20 papers in this collection demonstrate, the issues are complex and multifaceted. The authors address specific and highly contested issues as assisted suicide, stem cell research, cloning, reproductive health, and alternative medicine as well as more general questions such as who legitimately speaks for religion in public bioethics, what religion can add (...) to our understanding of justice, and the value of faith-based contributions to healthcare. Christian (Catholic and Protestant), Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist viewpoints are represented. The first book to focus on the interface of religion and bioethics, this collection fills a significant void in the literature. (shrink)

Reflected in the more than three thousand entries in this reference work is the rigorous professional training and the maturity of a lifetime of learning by an eminent scholar. Through judicious selection, Professor MacGregor has produced an essential and highly accessible reference book While no dictionary can pretend to cover every conceivable aspect within its field, the scope of this one makes it a unique desk companion for students at every level of religious studies. In addition to its extensive presentation (...) of religious and philosophical ideas of the Judeo-Christian heritage, the Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy also treats vast numbers of concepts that span philosophical and religious ideas from Egyptian and Indian antiquity to the Bogomils and the Druze, from the Zoroastrians to contemporary movements as diverse as scientology and the Rastafarians, from Neoplatonism to the Vienna circle, from the varieties of Buddhism to the schisms in Islam, from bioethical questions in ancient India to contemporary American discussions on euthanasia. All told, this is the most expansive one-volume desk reference work available for religious studies. Extensive bibliographies, organized by subject at the end of the book further its value as a reference work. (shrink)

Physician religion/spirituality has the potential to influence the communication between physicians and parents of children at the end of life. In order to explore this relationship, the authors conducted two rounds of narrative interviews to examine pediatric physicians’ perspectives (N=17) of how their religious/spiritual beliefs affect end–of–life communication and care. Grounded theory informed the design and analysis of the study. As a proxy for religiosity/spirituality, physicians were classified into the following groups based on the extent to which religious/spiritual language (...) was infused into their responses: Religiously Rich Responders (RRR), Moderately Religious Responders (MRR), and Low Religious Responders (LRR). Twelve of the 17 participants (71%) were classified into the RRR or MRR groups. The majority of participants suggested that religion/spirituality played a role in their practice of medicine and communication with parents in a myriad of ways and to varying degrees. Participants used their religious/spiritual beliefs to support families’ spirituality, uphold hope, participate in prayer, and alleviate their own emotional distress emerging from their patients’ deaths. (shrink)

Most quantitative studies that survey nurses’ attitudes toward euthanasia and/or assisted suicide, also attempt to assess the influence of religion on these attitudes. We wanted to evaluate the operationalisation of religion and world view in these surveys. In the Pubmed database we searched for relevant articles published before August 2008 using combinations of search terms. Twenty-eight relevant articles were found. In five surveys nurses were directly asked whether religious beliefs, religious practices and/or ideological convictions influenced their attitudes, or (...) the respondents were requested to mention the decisional basis for their answers on questions concerning end-of-life issues. In other surveys the influence of religion and world view was assessed indirectly through a comparison of the attitudes of different types of believers and/or non-believers toward euthanasia or assisted suicide. In these surveys we find subjective religious or ideological questions (questions inquiring about the perceived importance of religion or world view in life, influence of religion or world view on life in general, or how religious the respondents consider themselves) and objective questions (questions inquiring about religious practice, acceptance of religious dogmas, and religious or ideological affiliation). Religious or ideological affiliation is the most frequently used operationalisation of religion and world view. In 16 surveys only one religious or ideological question was asked. In most articles the operationalisation of religion and world view is very limited and does not reflect the diversity and complexity of religion and world view in contemporary society. Future research should pay more attention to the different dimensions of religion and world view, the religious plurality of Western society and the particularities of religion in non-Western contexts. (shrink)

This article calls nursing to engage in the study of religions and identifies six considerations that arise in religious studies and the ways in which religious faith is expressed. It argues that whole-person care cannot be realized, neither can there be a complete understanding of bioethics theory and decision making, without a rigorous understanding of religious-ethical systems. Because religious traditions differ in their cosmology, ontology, epistemology, aesthetic, and ethical methods, and because religious subtraditions interact with specific cultures, each (...) class='Hi'>religion and subtradition has something distinctive to offer to ethical discourse. A brief example is drawn from Native American religions, specifically their view of `speech' and `words'. Although the example is particular to an American context, it is intended to demonstrate a more general principle that an understanding of religion per se can yield new insights for bioethics. (shrink)

In this article I offer a critique of certain moral perspectives that are found in the second edition of Engelhardt’s Foundation of Bioethics. These views are spelled out in explicit detail in his second edition, and follow on the heels of a profound religious conversion. I question some of the conclusions that Engelhardt reaches as they touch upon moral frameworks, pluralism, and a ‘secular’ bioethics.

Hom and colleagues (2016) argue in favor of allowing religious exemptions to congenital critical heart disease (CCHD) newborn screening, but the logic of their position is at odds with the moral ju...

Accession Number: ATLA0001713191; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 836-849.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 849.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.