Contemporary Catholic Health Care Ethics: Second Edition

This is a revised and updated edition of David F. Kelly’s 2004 Contemporary Catholic Health Care Ethics, a comprehensive classroom text that represents a progressive alternative to the more traditional Ashley/O’Rourke corpus. The book includes three sections: theology (basic issues underlying Catholic thought), methodology (how Catholic theology approaches moral issues, including birth control), and applications to current issues in health care from the Catholic perspective. These current issues include several chapters on end-of-life concerns such as forgoing treatment, killing v. allowing to die, decisions for incompetent patients, and advance directives; and physician-assisted suicide. Additional chapters include hydration and nutrition; pain and pain management; hospital ethics committees; stem cell research; and the allocation of health care resources. New chapters in this edition include research ethics, organizational ethics, genetics, and global bioethics. In addition, the existing chapter on allocation of heath care resources has been expand. A glossary describes over fifty key terms in the field.