Description
Book SynopsisEthics is commonly assumed to be the one realm in which luck and risk do not intrude.
Trade Review“Although risk is widely discussed in the medical ethics literature, luck has been conspicuously absent. This book seeks to fill this void by drawing on the extensive treatments of luck by philosophers and applying them to issues in medicine and health care…the book provides a useful framework for analyzing issues in medical ethics.”
John R. Williams, The Heythop Journal
"Dickenson's book is truly groundbreaking. By viewing issues of applied ethics through the unusual prism of moral luck, she throws an unexpected light on familiar themes in medical ethics, and by bringing the problem of moral luck into relatively unchartered areas, she goes some way in rectifying the neglect into which this important problem has fallen in recent years."
Stuart Rennie, Ethical Perspectives
Table of ContentsIntroduction.
Chapter One: Ethics versus Luck.
The myriad forms of luck.
A preliminary typology of luck.
Outcome luck: further considerations.
Moral luck: how serious and genuine is the paradox?.
Judgement from hindsight: Gauguin and Anna Karenina.
Escaping from the paradox.
Chapter Two: The Fragility of Virtue and the Robust Health of Kantianism.
Moral luck and virtue.
The fragility of goodness.
Kantianism and moral luck.
Chapter Three Utilitarianism and Luck in Outcomes.
Actual consequences.
Potential consequences.
Remorse and regret.
Chapter Four: Risk and Consent.
The law of consent: prudent patient versus reasonable doctor.
Remorse, responsibility and consent.
Rationality and risk.
How much is the doctor responsible for?.
Chapter Five: Death and Dying.
Withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment and assisted suicide.
Advance directives.
Chapter Six: Moral Luck and the Allocation of Health Care Resources.
The `micro level`.
Knowing our limits: ‘the macro level’.
Chapter Seven: Reproductive Ethics: What Risks Can Women Be Asked to Bear?.
Risk, contract and ‘surrogacy’.
Therapeutic and human cloning.
Chapter Eight Psychiatry and Risk.
Risk and dangerousness: luck in outcomes.
Luck in character.
Chapter Nine: Luck, genetics and moral character.
Are genes us?.
Genetics and luck in decisions to be faced.
Genetics and luck in antecedent circumstances.
Gauguin revisited: character, genetics and moral luck.
Chapter Ten Moral Luck and Global Ethics.
Towards justice and virtue: O’Neill’s account.
The final synthesis: global ethics and moral luck.
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