Hindu Bioethics for the Twenty-first Century

by S. Cromwell Crawford

Overview

S. Cromwell Crawford breaks new ground in this provocative study of Hindu bioethics in a Western setting. He provides a new moral and philosophical perspective on fascinating and controversial bioethical issues that are routinely in the news: cloning, genetic engineering, the human genome project, reproductive technologies, the end of life, and many more. This Hindu perspective is particularly noteworthy because of India's own indigenous medical system, which is stronger than ever and drawing continued interest from the West. The Hindu bioethics presented in this book are philosophically pluralistic and ethically contextual, giving them that conceptual flexibility which is often missing in Western religions, but which is demanded by the twenty-first century's complex moral problems. Comprehensive in scope and passionate in nature, Crawford's study is an important resource for analyses of practical ethics, bioethics, and health care.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791457801
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	10/09/2003
Series:	SUNY series in Religious Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

S. Cromwell Crawford is Professor and Chair of Religion at the University of Hawaii and the author of many books on Hindu ethics, including Dilemmas of Life and Death: Hindu Ethics in a North American Context, also published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS

1. Hindu Ethics

2. Indian Medicine

3. A Hindu Bioethical Analysis of Health/Disease and Physician/Patient Relationships in American Society

PART TWO: ISSUES AT THE BEGINNING AND END OF LIFE

4. Technology and the Womb

5. Dilemmas at Birth

6. When Parents Let Children Suffer for Reasons of Faith

7. The Ethics of Contraception

8. The Ethics of Prenatal Diagnosis for Sex Selection

9. The Ethics of the Human Genome Project

10. The Ethics of Genetic Engineering

11. The Ethics of Cloning

12. The Ethics of Population Growth

13. The Ethics of Aging: Maximizing the Quality of Later Life

14. The Ethics of Death and Dying

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Crawford makes accessible a wealth of Hindu perspectives on biomedical reasoning and practice that are at once practical and profound. His book is indispensable for practitioners and educators in biomedicine and health care who are concerned with utilizing the contributions of world traditions to attain more comprehensive and satisfactory solutions to some of the most challenging problems faced by humankind. It is a tremendous resource for understanding Hindu value theory and philosophy of person and body, as seen through the lens of health and medicine."

From the Publisher