Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction

Medical ethics—from thorny moral questions such as euthanasia and the morality of killing to political questions such as the fair distribution of healthcare resources—is rarely out of today’s media. Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction explores the ethical reasoning used to approach medical ethics, introducing the most important ‘tools’ of ethical reasoning, and discussing how argument, thought experiments, and intuition can be combined in the consideration of medical ethics. It also considers its practical application by health professionals in clinical settings and the increasingly important place of medical ethics in the wider social context, in healthcare policy, discussions in the media, pressure group and activism settings, and in legal judgements.