Risk and Luck in Medical Ethics 2003

This book examines in detail the paradox of 'moral happiness' , relating it to the Kantian, consequentialist and virtue approach to ethics. Dickenson applies the paradoxes of risk and happiness to medical ethics, including a timely discussion of risk and happiness in the allocation of scarce healthcare resources, informed consent to treatment, the decision to discontinue life-sustaining treatment, psychiatry, reproductive ethics, genetic testing, medical research and evidence-based medicine. The book concludes with an analysis of the relevance of risk and luck in the medical context in global ethics research. If risk and happiness are taken seriously, it seems to follow that we cannot develop any defined moral norms at all , that we are doomed to moral relativism. However, Dickenson offers a strong counter-argument to this view that allows us to think in terms of universal standards for evaluating ethical systems.