Defense Date

11-9-2017

Graduation Date

Fall 1-1-2017

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

Health Care Ethics

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Gerard Magill

Committee Member

Henk ten Have

Committee Member

Joris Gielen

Keywords

Ethical Religious Directives, ERDs, Catholic Tradition, Ethics, Normative Approach, Ethical Dilemmas, Medical Technology

Abstract

The dissertation engages the Catholic Tradition enunciated in the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services to provide a normative approach for resolving ethical dilemmas regarding pivotal breakthroughs in medical technology.

This normative ethical approach has two components: a normative framework for Catholic health care ethics that adopts practical ethical principles as enunciated in the Ethical and Religious Directives (Chapter 2) and secular decision-making models in organizational and clinical ethics that are consistent with the Catholic Tradition (Chapter 3).

At the end of the theoretical analysis in these chapters, the conclusion to Chapter 3 explains how this normative approach reflects the Catholic Tradition on Natural Law. This normative approach is then applied to significant ethical dilemmas regarding a variety of pivotal issues that deal with medical technology: reproductive technologies (Chapter 4), regenerative technologies (Chapter 5), and end-of-life technologies (Chapter 6). The conclusion of each of these practical chapters applies the Natural law approach of the Catholic Tradition to offer an ethical critique of each topic based on the Ethical and Religious Directives.

Language

English

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