Bioethics

Fire, flood, earthquake, famine, pestilence, and warfare are no strangers to our experience. Once, we sought to placate the gods who brought these evils upon us. Today, clinicians, engineers, and politicians replace priests, prophets, seers, and shamans, and we—Americans in particular—think to impose our will upon the world. In times of catastrophe, issues of good and evil surrender to rapid, nearly automatic, operational response. Yet the catastrophic event poses unavoidable moral choices, ones that are more politically and emotionally complex since 9/11 and our "War on Terrorism." This book benefits from the emergence of bioethics as it has evolved from its clinical roots to address policy, politics, and social practice far removed from that origin. At the same time, the clinical focus on narratives and cases provides a tangible center for ethical reflection. It reminds us that ethics is about persons and their choices, a perspective often lost to abstraction when ethics is left to the ministrations of academe. By treating the catastrophic event as both a category and a genre, Bioethics connects to aesthetics and so enables us to enrich ethical inquiry by ranging from pandemic, hurricane, and flood to terrorist attack.

Public health and health care staff, all sector leaders, and societal decision makers face novel logistical, operational, and moral challenges in every catastrophe, whether natural, man-made, or overlapping. This beautifully written text sets the background and instructs readers how to build sound moral approaches into their responses to disaster. Each chapter will help the reader learn how to incorporate ethical considerations in the decision-making process to better face bio-terrorist events and severe natural calamities. Decisions in catastrophe situations all too easily can lead to unintended consequences, oppression, unfair suspension of autonomy and civil liberties, distrust, poor cooperation, and severe mental stress, if an ethical framework is not included. Stakeholders, decision-makers, and staff will appreciate the carefully constructed explanations about how ethics can be included in their responses to challenges they have never faced before. Partners in communities can use this text as a guide to plan and conduct drills which will help their people move from despair to resilience.

Howard B. Radest is adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort.