Bioethics Yearbook: Regional Developments in Bioethics: 1991-1993: 4 - Tapa dura

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nology in New Zealand. Angeles Tan Alora reports on the Code of Pharmaceutical Marketmg Practices developed by the Pharmaceutical and Health Care Association of the Philippines. Ruud ter Meulen and his colleagues provide detailed analysis of the Remmelink Commission's report on euthanasia in the Netherlands. Kazumasa Hoshino discusses the fmdings of the Special Committee on Gene Therapy in Japan. As such examples suggest, the activities of many governmental groups and professional advisory bodies, although varied, tend to converge upon a number of especially important issues. If one peruses the index of documents discussed in Volume Four, certain topics are more often the focus of legislation and official concern than others: withholding and withdrawing treatment, access to health care, consent to treatment and experimentation, and issues posed by HIV testing and AIDS. Such a common focus should not be exaggerated, for the discussion of topics is wide-ranging. But that commonality, when in evidence, is also not surprising. It suggests that key issues and concerns in bioethics may be widely shared among modern cultures and societies, for all the distinctiveness of a particular nation's or region's response to them. Issues of informed consent, after all, implicate more fundamental matters of respect for persons and the rights of individuals in the contexts of therapy and research. Issues of access to medical care concretize deeper questions about the nature and scope of a society's welfare obligations to its citizens.

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The Yearbook series alternates between a biennial volume tracing recent theological discussions on topics in bioethics and a biennial volume tracing recent regional discussions in bioethics. Volume 4 provides a comprehensive single-volume summary of recent international and regional developments on specific topics in bioethics.
To give uniformity to the discussions all authors were asked to report on the following topics: new reproductive technologies, abortion, maternal-fetal conflicts, case of severely disabled newborns, consent of treatment and experimentation, confidentiality, equitable access to health care, ethical concerns raised by cost-containment measures, decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment, active euthanasia, the definition of death, organ donation and transplantation, and a final broad category of other issues.
The internationally respected contributors report on the following 16 areas: the United States, Canada, Latin America, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany/Austria/Switzerland, Spain/Portugal/Italy, Scandinavia, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Australia/New Zealand.
The commentators draw on three sets of resources:

• Statutes, legislative proposals, and regulatory changes that directly influence or have implications for, areas of bioethical concern;
• Case law and court judgments that shape, either decisively or suggestively, recent legal interpretations of particular issues of areas in bioethics;
• Formal statements of governmentally appointed commissions, advisory bodies, and representative professional groups, as well as less formal statements and recommendations of other organisations.