BIOETHICAL DECISION MAKING AND ARGUMENTATION

1. Principlism in Bioethics
2. Values and Bioethics
3. A Human Rights Approach to Bioethics
4. Philosophical Imperialism? A Critical View of North American Principlist Bioethics
5. Principlism and Normative Systems
6. Types of Action and Criteria for Individualizing Them: The Case of Omission of Life-Saving Care
7. Bioethics, Deliberation and Argumentation
8. The Principle of Proportionality, Rights Theory and the Double Effect Doctrine
9. International Bioethics Committees: Conditions for a Good Deliberation

This book clarifies the meaning of the most important and pervasive concepts and tools in bioethical argumentation (principles, values, dignity, rights, duties, deliberation, prudence) and assesses the methodological suitability of the main methods for clinical decision-making and argumentation. The first part of the book is devoted to the most developed or promising approaches regarding bioethical argumentation, namely those based on principles, values and human rights. The authors then continue to deal with the contributions and shortcomings of these approaches and suggest further developments by means of substantive and procedural elements and concepts from practical philosophy, normative systems theory, theory of action, human rights and legal argumentation. Furthermore, new models of biomedical and health care decision-making, which overcome the aforementioned criticism and stress the relevance of the argumentative responsibility, are included.

Features
• The only book dealing with the unavoidable link between bioethics and legal argumentation
• Accurately describes and sharply assesses the main methodological approaches for clinical decision-making
• Contains a collection of plural contributions of international scholars on the decisive and underrated topic of bioethical argumentation