Bioethics in America: Origins and Cultural Politics

by M. L. Tina Stevens

Overview

In Bioethics in America, Tina Stevens challenges the view that the origins of the bioethics movement can be found in the 1960s, a decade mounting challenges to all variety of authority. Instead, Stevens sees bioethics as one more product of a "centuries-long cultural legacy of American ambivalence toward progress," and she finds its modern roots in the responsible science movement that emerged following detonation of the atomic bomb.

Rather than challenging authority, she says, the bioethics movement was an aid to authority, in that it allowed medical doctors and researchers to proceed on course while bioethicists managed public fears about medicine's new technologies. That is, the public was reassured by bioethical oversight of biomedicine; in reality, however, bioethicists belonged to the same mainstream that produced the doctors and researchers whom the bioethicists were guiding.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801864254
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	10/06/2000
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

M. L. Tina Stevens teaches in the history department at San Francisco State University.

Table of Contents

Prologue. The Tradition of Ambivalence
Chapter 1. The Culture of Post-atomic Ambivalence
Chapter 2 "Leaders of Leaders": The Hastings Center, 1969 to the Present
Chapter 3. Redefining Death in America, 1968
Chapter 4. "Sleeping Beauty": Karen Ann Quinlan and the Rise of Bioethics in America
Epilogue. Conclusion and Outlook

Editorial Reviews

Ultimately, the innovations and court decisions most associated with bioethics, Stevens shows, were less rooted in concern about the abuse of patients than in researchers' and biomedical institutions' desires for the freedom to pursue new medical technologies and their need for protection from legal liability. Bioethics has served more as a 'midwife' to new medical research and technologies than as a critic. These findings should concern all of us. Steven's critical analysis of bioethics is a valuable revision.
—Leslie J. Reagan, American Historical Review

An interesting and provocative book, well worth reading for the issues it raises as well as for the historical analysis of the bioethics movement.
—Audrey K. Gordon, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

Bioethics in America merits our attention. It will encourage additional reflection on the sources and meaning of the rise of this new profession dedicated to moral arbitration.
—Raymond DeVries, Journal of American History

Stevens has a pithy prose style and a healthy willingness to challenge received wisdom.
—Robert Baker, Ph.D, Journal of the History of Medicine

A major contribution to the history of bioethics.
—Choice

From the Publisher

An interesting and provocative book, well worth reading for the issues it raises as well as for the historical analysis of the bioethics movement.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - Audrey K. Gordon

Bioethics in America merits our attention. It will encourage additional reflection on the sources and meaning of the rise of this new profession dedicated to moral arbitration.

Journal of American History - Raymond DeVries

The beginnings of the bioethics movement is not, argues this book, to be found in the 1960s, as is popularly held, but is an extension of a centuries-long cultural ambivalence towards progress<-->its most recent roots in the responsible science movement that emerged following detonation of the atomic bomb. Following a discussion of the origins of bioethics, Stevens (history, San Francisco State U.) examines how the independence of early bioethicists at the Hastings Center, the nation's first bioethics institute, was compromised by the need to placate funding institutions. The final chapter reexamines the Karen Quinlan case and its consequences. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Stevens has a pithy prose style and a healthy willingness to challenge received wisdom.

Journal of the History of Medicine - Robert Baker

Ultimately, the innovations and court decisions most associated with bioethics, Stevens shows, were less rooted in concern about the abuse of patients than in researchers' and biomedical institutions' desires for the freedom to pursue new medical technologies and their need for protection from legal liability. Bioethics has served more as a 'midwife' to new medical research and technologies than as a critic. These findings should concern all of us. Steven's critical analysis of bioethics is a valuable revision.

American Historical Review - Leslie J. Reagan

A major contribution to the history of bioethics.

Choice

Stevens has a pithy prose style and a healthy willingness to challenge received wisdom.

— Robert Baker, Ph.D

Journal of the History of Medicine

Bioethics in America merits our attention. It will encourage additional reflection on the sources and meaning of the rise of this new profession dedicated to moral arbitration.

— Raymond DeVries

Journal of American History

An interesting and provocative book, well worth reading for the issues it raises as well as for the historical analysis of the bioethics movement.

— Audrey K. Gordon

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

Ultimately, the innovations and court decisions most associated with bioethics, Stevens shows, were less rooted in concern about the abuse of patients than in researchers' and biomedical institutions' desires for the freedom to pursue new medical technologies and their need for protection from legal liability. Bioethics has served more as a 'midwife' to new medical research and technologies than as a critic. These findings should concern all of us. Steven's critical analysis of bioethics is a valuable revision.

— Leslie J. Reagan

American Historical Review