Biomedical Technology and Public Policy

(Hardback)

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As biomedical technologies explode, they offer new hope for many and expanded opportunities for controlling life. Yet even as they do, they create unparalleled ethical and political dilemmas. Choices must be made regarding what technologies are to be developed and to whom their benefits will be available. Social consequences of these choices must be explored and fully understood. Moreover, public officials must meet these issues head-on, formulating clearly articulated policy objectives in this complex arena. This volume is designed to provide a framework for studying as a comprehensive whole, the public policy implications of biomedical technologies. Each of its chapters focuses on the policy issue and political activities surrounding a single technology or set of related technologies. The articles are grouped into four sections based on the stage of life at which a particular technology has its great impact: prior to or at conception, during the prenatal or neonatal period, within the life cycle and at the end of life. Its focus is public policy as opposed to purely ethnical considerations.

Author Bio

Robert H. Blank is an Adjunct Professor at University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and Visiting Professor in Public Health at the National Taiwan University. ROBERT H. BLANK is Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Program for Biosocial Research at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Biomedical Technology and Public Policy (Greenwood Press, 1989) and Regulating Reproduction (1990). MIRIAM K. MILLS is Professor of Organizational Science at The School of Industrial Management of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Previously, she was the Director of Manpower and Labor Relations of Jersey City Medical Center, New Jersey. A frequent contributor to various journals, she has coauthored Evaluation Analysis with Microcomputers and coedited Biomedical Technology and Public Policy. Dr. Mills is also an arbitrator-mediator with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and other labor panels.