American Bioethics: Crossing Human Rights and Health Law Boundaries

Bioethics and the values American bioethics embrace are based on American law, including liberty and justice. This book crosses the borders between bioethics and law, but moves beyond the domestic law/bioethics struggles for dominance by exploring attempts to articulate universal principles based on international human rights.

The isolationism of bioethics in the US is not tenable in the wake of scientific triumphs like decoding the human genome, and tragedies like international terrorism. Annas argues that by crossing boundaries which have artificially separated bioethics and health law from the international human rights movement, American bioethics can be reborn as a global force for good, instead of serving mainly the purposes of U.S. academics.