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Medical Ethics: Accounts of Ground-Breaking Cases

By Gregory E. Pence
ISBN10: 1266555684
ISBN13: 9781266555688
2024 Release

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ISBN10: 1266555684 | ISBN13: 9781266555688
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ISBN10: 1266905235 | ISBN13: 9781266905230
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ISBN10: 1260807827 | ISBN13: 9781260807820
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ISBN10: 1266905235 | ISBN13: 9781266905230

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ISBN10: 1260807827 | ISBN13: 9781260807820

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Product Information

Medical Ethics: Accounts of Ground-Breaking Cases provides an in-depth study of Bioethics through the fascinating lens of the cases that have changed the rules. Authored by a pioneer in the field, the critically-important and thought-provoking content is organized clearly, providing a framework for students’ own self-reflection and critical analysis. It includes discussions of famous cases, guiding students through detailed consideration of the issues raised. Pence integrates descriptions of the cases and their issues with historical overviews, following cases over decades to tell readers what did, and often what did not, happen.

Medical Ethics' single, engaging authorial voice guides students through this exciting, complex, and ever-expanding field. 

1 Good and Bad Ethical Reasoning; Moral Theories and Principles
2 Requests to Die: Terminal and Nonterminal Patients
3 Comas: Karen Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, and Terri Schiavo
4 Abortion: The Trial of Kenneth Edelin and the Overturning of Roe v. Wade
5 Assisted Reproduction, Multiple Gestations, Surrogacy, and Elderly
Parents 
6 Embryos, Stem Cells, and Reproductive Cloning 
7 Impaired Babies and the Americans with Disabilities Act 
8 Medical Research on Animals 
9 Medical Research on Vulnerable Populations 
10 Ethical Issues in First-Time Organ Surgeries 
11 The God Committee 
12 Using One Baby for Another 
13 Ethical Issues in the Treatment of Intersex and Transgender
Persons 
14 Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment and Research on People with
Schizophrenia 
15 Ethical Issues in Pre-Symptomatic Testing for Genetic Disease: Nancy
Wexler, Angelina Jolie, Diabetes and Alzheimer’s 
16 Ethical Issues in Stopping the Global Spread of Infectious Diseases:
AIDS, Ebola, and Zika 
17 Ethical Issues of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 
18 Ethical Issues in Medical Enhancement (and their effect on people with
Disabilities) 
19 Ethical Issues in Treating Alcoholism and Addiction 
20 The Ethics of Weight Management 
21 Ethical Issues Raised by Pandemics

About the Author

Gregory E. Pence

Gregory Pence, a pioneering American bioethicist, has taught bioethics for fifty years in the medical center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. 
His Medical Ethics: Accounts of Ground-Breaking Cases, 2024 release, a bestseller for over 34 years, stands as a standard textbook in the field. His Who's Afraid of Human Cloning? (1998) became a classic for its rigorous attack on opponents of human cloning. His Designer Food: Mutant Harvest or Breadbasket of the World? won Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2003 as did his Overcoming Addiction: Seven Imperfect Solutions and the End of America's Greatest Epidemic in 2020. Bioethicist Peter Singer called his Pandemic Bioethics "an extraordinary achievement." Choice magazine rated his What Went Wrong: America's Response to Covid and Lessons for the Future (2025) an "essential" book for every American library. The book was the subject of a conference in Kyoto, Japan in 2025

Pence testified in 2001 before the U.S. Congress and in 2002 before the California Senate. He has been interviewed on Bobby Battista's "Talk Back Live," "The Point" with Gretta von Susteren on CNN, "The Early Show with Bryant Gumbel" on CBS, and "Wolf Blitzer's Washington" on CNN.

He has published in Newsweek, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has given keynote talks in Portugal, London, Switzerland, Australia, Israel, China, and dozens of American universities.

At UAB, Pence directs a program for gifted undergraduates pre-admitted to medical and dental school. Teaching there, he has won all the Best Teacher awards at UAB across both sides of its campus.

He grew up in Washington, D.C., graduated from the College of William and Mary cum laude in Philosophy, earning his doctorate from New York University in 1974, where he took courses from visiting professor Derek Parfit and worked on his dissertation under visiting bioethicist Peter Singer.

He now intends to convey what he has learned over half a century with weekly episodes on his YouTube channel, Great Stories in Bioethics.

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