Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons^™

Murder, She Wrote Or Was It Merely Selective Nontreatment?, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article will both explore and thereby establish the medical, ethical, and legal validity of selective nontreatment of severely handicapped newborns. A construct for principled decision-making, tied to a basic recognition of the right of self-determination, as shaped by compassion and validated principles of triage and cost-benefit analysis, will be seen as the most effective means for the states-and not the federal government-to evaluate the intensely complex issues associated with allocating scarce medical resources to defective infants. Governmental intrusions into the familial decision- making forum in these circumstances must be kept to a minimum and allowed only in grave cases.

Re-Thinking Euthanasia And Death With Dignity: A Transnational Challenge, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Ethics Committees, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

In 1983, The President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research urged greater use of medical ethics committees. The Commission suggested that these committees could not only review treatment decisions made on behalf of incompetent, terminally ill patients and conduct reviews of those medical decision having ethical implications, but could also provide spiritual, psychological or social counseling for distressed family members. They could, furthermore, serve as prognosis committees endeavoring as such to confirm those prognoses which finds no reasonable possibility of a patient’s return to cognitive state. Today, more and more, ethics committees …

Assisted Noncoital Reproduction: A Comparative Analysis, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article, written in the last ten years of the 20th century, presents an historical metric of geopolitical, socio-legal, ethical, medical, and religious responses to noncoital reproduction in Australia, Britain, Germany, and the United States — as well as the various efforts of the United Nations — to protect reproductive freedoms as human rights. From this analysis will come an understanding of how these responses shape normative values, principles, regulatory policies and laws which in turn seek — at various levels — to monitor and even control scientific inquiry, advance social justice and safeguard procreative liberties for women. The U.S. …

The Frankenstein Myth And Contemporary Human Experimentation: Spectre, Legacy, Curse Or Imperative, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Death Be Not Proud: Medical, Ethical And Legal Dilemmas In Resource Allocation, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Procreational Autonomy V. State Intervention: Opportunity Or Crisis For A Brave New World, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

The new reproductive biology, in all its complexity, promises untold opportunities for resolving heart-breaking problems of infertility and will clearly expand the meaning of the very term, procreational autonomy, as a reference to both unmarried and married women. Still, the new biology presents equally untold problems for the physician, lawyer, ethicist, theologian and, for that matter, the average person. This article will consider, essentially, one major medical, legal, ethical and religious challenge of the new reproductive biology: in vitro fertilization (IVF).

The article will first survey the force of religion in shaping new attitudes and directions in this area and …

Australia’S Frozen ‘Orphan’ Embryos: A Medical, Legal And Ethical Dilemma, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

The central issues raised here are whether the two frozen embryos have a legal right to 1) live and be implanted in a surrogate mother, and, when and if they are born, 2) assert inheritance rights in the Rios' estate. Equally important is the question of the extent to which research into the new reproductive technologies should be allowed or restricted.

Genetics, Eugenics, And Public Policy, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Defective Newborns And Government Intermeddling, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Whenever a genetically defective infant is born, a triptych of interests is challenged directly. For such a case not only tests the extent of the natural rights of the parents in making decisions regarding the infant's capacity for qualitative life, but the personal needs or the welfare of the child itself and the nature of the responsibilities of the State in ensuring the welfare of its citizens regardless of age or infirmity. Aggressive posturing by the United States government, through a complex regulatory scheme designed to assure protection of handicapped newborns, has in fact wreaked havoc on the whole decision-making …

Quality Of Life, Sanctity Of Creation: Palliative Or Apotheosis?, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This Article will suggest an approach to facilitate decision-making where the concepts of quality of life and sanctity of life appear to clash. It is hoped that a reconciliation of these two ideas will provide an alternative to the increasing federal intervention in the process of family decision-making vis-a-vis handicapped infants.

The construct will combine deontological standards with situational, or consequential, ethics. This unique synthesis will then be placed within a sphere of expanded family advisers-medical, social, spiritual, legal, etc.-who are called into being with the birth of a genetically defective newborn. The force of the construct arises from the …

The Plight Of The Genetically Handicapped Newborn: A Comparative Analysis, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Confusion and controversy surround efforts to re-evaluate and, thus, redefine the extent to which governmental intrusion should be allowed in the doctor-patient relationship vis-a-vis the treatment or non treatment of genetically handicapped, at risk infants. The purpose of this article is to present a succinct comparative analysis of the medical-legal posture in Britain and the United States and from this analysis to develop a construct to aid the physician and the family in making decisions concerning the administration or the withholding of treatment for genetically defective newborns.

Sexuality, Privacy And The New Biology, George P. Smith Ii, Roberto Iraola

Scholarly Articles

This Article investigates two alternative methods of human conception: Specifically, the artificial insemination of unmarried women for either their own personal purposes of pregnancy without the benefit of marriage or as surrogates for infertile women. Surrogation is evaluated, then, as an analytic complement to the sexual privacy of women who are expressing their sexual freedom through unconventional means to become pregnant.

The conclusion drawn is that an unmarried woman’s fundamental right to privacy or procreation does not encompass a right to either artificial insemination or surrogation. To allow unfettered access to these two methods of conception would - quite simply …

Handicapped Babies And The Law: The United States Position, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Cryonic Suspension: A Prospect For Immortality, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Razor’S Edge Of Human Bonding: Artificial Fathers And Surrogate Mothers, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article will examine the plight of the artificial father and surrogate mother by focusing on how the law views artificial insemination. From this focus, the author will explore alternative responses for dealing with problems involving surrogate mothers, donor insemination, and infertility and show their symbiotic, if not direct, relation to the problem of infertility.

Intimations Of Immorality: Clones, Cyrons And The Law, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article examines some legal and moral issues associated with two developing areas of biomedicine; cloning and cryonics. The author firstly considers the practical benefits to society of developing perfecting and utilizing the process of cloning. These include the ability to overcome inheritable genetic defects and the provision of organs for transplantation. Against this must be weighed some moral and ethical problems of genetic engineering. Professor Smith then discusses the process of deep-freezing a person and the development of cryonics as a social movement. The major legal problem stemming from cryonics is determining the time at which a cryonically suspended …

Intrusions Of A Parvenu: Science, Religion, And The New Biology, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Both religion and the law must seriously consider artificial insemination so that dogma and laws are formed to incorporate the process. Science has brought the procedure to a society unequipped to deal with the religious and legal implications of birth through artificial insemination in any of its forms. Not all religions or jurisdictions can be expected to treat the process exactly alike, but there must be an effort on the part of each organization to react to the situation facing them so that their citizens will have some guidance.

Section II of this article illuminates the path science is on …

The Promise Of Abundant Life: Patenting A Magnificent Obsession, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

The purpose of this essay will be to explore the parameters of the scientific imperative to explore truth. The scope of this inquiry is shaped in part by the United States patent laws and administrative interpretations and, more specifically, by the United States Supreme Court in its recent holding allowing the new forms of life created in a laboratory to be patented. The ultimate purpose of this piece, then, is to refute the arrogance of power theory expressed as being implicit in the investigations of the vast potential for the positive achievement of good through harnessing the "New Biology." Thus, …

Great Expectations Or Convoluted Realities: Artificial Insemination In Flux, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Uncertainties On The Spiral Staircase: Meta-Ethics And The New Biology, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Manipulating The Genetic Code: Jurisprudential Conundrums, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article considers the scientific, legal, ethical, and social issues of the Brave New World of Biotechnology as they existed in 1976 and as they exist — interestingly — today. Central to these issues (e.g., in vitro fertilization, genetic planning) presented in historical context, is consideration of the extent to which freedom of scientific investigation should be allowed and even encouraged by the government. In order to shape normative standards of conduct from which ethical constructs can be developed and policy developed, scientific experimentation must be promoted and designed to safeguard the common good — this, by enhancing opportunities for …

Through A Test Tube Darkly: Artificial Insemination And The Law, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Although written forty-four years ago, this article provides a foundational analysis of the then-nascent beginnings of the legalization of artificial insemination from the judicial posture taken by the state of California to the legislative stance of Oklahoma. Analyzing the consequences of artificial insemination by a donor (A.I.D.) and by a woman’s husband (A.I.H.), the consequences of these procedures on family law — and especially illegitimacy — inheritance, and adultery, are studied and evaluated.

In order to provide some degree of stability and predictability to this obviously contentious area within Law, Science, and Medicine, this article urges measured experimentation in genetics …