African American Bioethics

Culture, Race, and Identity

Lawrence J. Prograis, Edmund D. Pellegrino, Lawrence J. PrograisJr., Edmund D. Pellegrino

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781589011649, 9781589011632
• eBook ISBN: 9781589012325
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Ethics in Medicine

Do people of differing ethnicities, cultures, and races view medicine and bioethics differently? And, if they do, should they? Are doctors and researchers taking environmental perspectives into account when dealing with patients? If so, is it done effectively and properly?

In African American Bioethics, Lawrence J. Prograis Jr. and Edmund D. Pellegrino bring together medical practitioners, researchers, and theorists to assess one fundamental question: Is there a distinctive African American bioethics?

The book's contributors resoundingly answer yes—yet their responses vary. They discuss the continuing African American experience with bioethics in the context of religion and tradition, work, health, and U.S. society at large—finding enough commonality to craft a deep and compelling case for locating a black bioethical framework within the broader practice, yet recognizing profound nuances within that framework.

As a more recent addition to the study of bioethics, cultural considerations have been playing catch-up for nearly two decades. African American Bioethics does much to advance the field by exploring how medicine and ethics accommodate differing cultural and racial norms, suggesting profound implications for growing minority groups in the United States.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Culture and Bioethics:Where Ethics and Mores Meet
• Chapter 1 Revisiting African American Perspectives on Biomedical Ethics: Distinctiveness and Other Questions
• Chapter 2 The Moral Weight of Culture in Ethics
• Chapter 3 Whitewashing Black Health: Lies, Deceptions, Assumptions, and Assertions—and the Disparities Continue
• Chapter 4 Race, Equity, Health Policy, and the African American Community
• Chapter 5 Religion and Ethical Decision Making in the African American Community: Bioterrorism and the Black Postal Workers
• Chapter 6 Personal Narrative and an African American Perspective on Medical Ethics
• Chapter 7 Does an African American Perspective Alter Clinical Ethical Decision Making at the Bedside?
• Chapter 8 Race, Genetics, and Ethics
• Afterword: An African American’s Internal Perspective on Biomedical Ethics
• Contributors
• Index