This edition represents a thorough revision of a classic text in biomedical ethics, featuring significant structural changes. A new concluding chapter on methods complements a chapter on moral theory, emphasizing convergence across theories, coherence in moral justification, and common morality. The opening chapter on moral norms has been simplified to introduce prima facie moral principles and their specification and balancing, making it more accessible for students entering bioethics courses. Additionally, there is a greater focus on character and moral agency, distinguishing between agents and actions. Key sections on truth-telling, disclosure of bad news, privacy, conflicts of interest, and research on human subjects have been extensively reworked. The four core chapters on principles—respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice—along with the chapter on professional-patient relationships, maintain their familiar structure but have been fully updated to reflect recent developments in philosophical analysis, research, medicine, and health care. Actual cases are used throughout to illuminate and test the theory, method, and framework of principles presented in the text.
