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The blood transfusion taboo of Jehovah's Witnesses: origin, development and function of a controversial doctrine.

Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed to accept a blood transfusion. According to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society this therapy is a transgression of divine precepts. Additionally, in the judgement of the believers, secular proof is abundant these days; to them AIDS is a powerful justification to abstain from blood. Founded on the work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, it is argued that the rejection of this medical therapy is based on perceptions of pollution and purity inherent in the Watch Tower Society's ideological concept of anti-worldliness. Rooted in the movement's pre-war opposition to vaccination the implementation of the taboo was triggered by the prevailing social-political climate surrounding the Society during the Second World War, resulting in this intriguing and controversial religious proscription. For the community of Jehovah's Witnesses the blood transfusion taboo still functions as a significant mechanism of sectarian boundary maintenance.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

Assisted suicide: an evaluation.

Physician-assisted suicide is a form of euthanasia. As such, it is contrary to one's ethical responsibility to self, community, and God. Religious tradition, medical tradition, and modern psychology attest that physician-assisted suicide does not solve any human problem.

Catholicism

Pain relief: the perspective of Catholic tradition.

Efforts to study patient care from the perspective of Catholic ethics date back four centuries. In the course of this history, a prominent issue has always been management of pain and the efforts to avoid pain. Thus, Catholic theologians were concerned about the effects of pain medication upon the psychic function and considered whether or not hastening death for suffering people was allowed and the ethical norms for using opioids to remove pain when death is imminent. Moreover, the issue of "overmedication" for difficult or elderly patients has been a concern. The President's Commission on Ethics in Medicine and Human Research has utilized many of the principles developed by Catholic theologians when considering the matter of pain relief for dying persons.

Attitude to Death

The role of religions in the analysis of the ethical issues of human gene therapy.

Beginning with critical writings of certain theological ethicists in 1965, religious bodies increasingly have been fostering studies of emerging issues implied by genetic technology. While perceiving this new science as consistent with belief in God as Creator, they define a number of dangers to human well-being and natural environment that might result from abuse of knowledge. The way in which religious concerns and their spokesman have now entered into discussions within the scientific community is of notable importance.

Ethics, Medical

Medical ethics in India.

Medical ethics in the Indian context is closely related to indigenous classical and folk traditions. This article traces the history of Indian conceptions of ethics and medicine, with an emphasis on the Hindu tradition. Classical Ayurvedic texts including Carakasamhita and Susrutasamhita provide foundational assumptions about the body, the self, and gunas, which provide the underpinnings for the ethical system. Karma, the notion that every action has consequences, provides a foundation for medical morality. Conception, prolongation of one's blood-line is an important ethical aim of life. Thus a wide range of practices to further conception are acceptable. Abortion is a more complex matter ethically. At the end of life death is viewed in the context of passage to another life. Death is a relief from suffering to be coped with by the thought of an eternal atman or rebirth.

Beginning of Human Life

Medical ethics and the Islamic tradition.

After tracing the main features of the foundational ethical perspectives and their relationship to the rise of medical practice in early Islam, the paper focuses on the development of the moral concept of adab. This concept served as an important tool in defining and shaping an ethical tradition based on the integration of the Hippocratic tradition into Muslim medicine and its underlying moral values. The existence of plural therapeutic systems and their moral and theological sources are also noted and an attempt is made to show how all of these diverse modes co-existed through most of the pre-modern history of medicine among Muslims. The paper ends by outlining the impact the European colonial and cultural encounter with the World of Islam had, in creating a duality in medical practice, education and institutions, thus limiting sustained and meaningful discourse between modern medical science and the ethical values of Islam.

Cultural Diversity

Bioethics in Thailand: the struggle for Buddhist solutions.

The Thai concern for bioethics has been stimulated by the departure of Thai medicine from its long tradition through the introduction of Western medical models. Bioethics is now being taught to Thai medical students emphasizing moral insights and principles found within Thai culture. These are to a large extent Buddhist themes. Veracity is always a duty for people in general and medical personnel in particular. Falsehoods and deception cannot be morally justified simply on the grounds that we think it is good for another. Buddhism also prohibits killing. The doctrine of kamma holds that joys and sorrows are the result of one's own past actions. Kamma must run its course or will be manifest in a future life. Mercy-killing also violates the Buddhist psychology. A physician who kills subconsciously transfers his aversion to suffering to the one who embodies the suffering. Buddhist justice is understood in terms of impartiality and equal treatment. Compassion goes beyond justice to self-giving and self-denial. It is central to the path to the attainment of highest human fulfillment.

Advisory Committees

Donum Vitae on homologous interventions: is IVF-ET a less acceptable gift than "GIFT"?

Donum Vitae argues that, by failing to respect the connection between the conjugal act and procreation, in vitro fertilization-even in the homologous or "simple case", where both gametes come from a married couple and the resulting embryo is transferred to the wife-shows itself to be morally unacceptable. On the other hand, the document refers approvingly to other technological interventions which "facilitate" or "assist" the conjugal act in achieving its objective. Although none of the latter interventions are mentioned by name, the recently developed gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT) and certain associated techniques have found favor with many orthodox Roman Catholic thinkers, as well with some church authorities. The present article explores this situation in the Catholic moral tradition, and offers reasons for believing that, given relevantly similar conditions, if GIFT is morally acceptable so also is homologous IVF-ET.

Catholicism

Metaphysical accounts of the zygote as a person and the veto power of facts.

That the soul of a human person is infused at conception is a metaphysical claim. But given its traditional articulation, it has the empirical consequence that the zygote must have a substantial continuity with the adult person, a continuity which is already determined at conception. This empirical consequence is contradicted by the fact that the zygote may become a hydatidiform mole, or several persons. The metaphysical claim is falsified by the facts.

Beginning of Human Life