Besides offering a critical analysis of the WHO definition and a review of both ancient and contemporary conceptions of health, the cooperative effort of physicians and philosophers presented in this book works through the challenges which any definition of health faces, if it is to be both truly personalist, and at the same time operational. The overall purpose of this book is to capture the essentials of human health and to propose the outlines for a personalist understanding of this concept, i.e., a conception that does justice to the personal nature of human beings by introducing dimensions that are essential to personal life and well-being, such as the realms of rationality, affectivity and freedom, the realms of meaning, values, morality, and spirituality, the realms of social and interpersonal relations.

Althen (former foreign student adviser, U. of Iowa) gives advice to foreign visitors to the U.S. that is intended to help them understand the motivations, attitudes, communication styles, and actions of Americans. Emphasizing the interpretation of observed behavior, he covers ways of reasoning and American ideas about politics, family life, education, religion, the media, social relationships, racial and ethnic diversity, male-female relationships, sports and recreation, driving, shopping, personal hygiene, and organizational and public behavior. Over-generalization is an understandable danger in such a work as this, but Althen does make an effort to emphasize that there are variations among Americans, while he concentrates on the similarities. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Why do so many government policies fail to achieve their objectives? Why are our political leaders not held to account for policy failures? Drawing on his years of experience as a senior government policy maker, as well as on global research, Stephen Muers uses examples ranging from the collapse of the Soviet Union to Cold War Germany, the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum to expose the crucial impact culture and values have on policy success and political accountability. This illuminating study sets out why policy makers need to take culture seriously, how culture and values shape the political system and presents essential, practical recommendations for what governments should do differently.

Breakthroughs in biomedicine often lead to new life-giving treatments but may also raise troubling, even life-and-death, quandaries. Society's Choices discusses ways for people to handle today's bioethics issues in the context of America's unique history and cultureâ€"and from the perspectives of various interest groups. The book explores how Americans have grappled with specific aspects of bioethics through commission deliberations, programs by organizations, and other mechanisms and identifies criteria for evaluating the outcomes of these efforts. The committee offers recommendations on the role of government and professional societies, the function of commissions and institutional review boards, and bioethics in health professional education and research. The volume includes a series of 12 superb background papers on public moral discourse, mechanisms for handling social and ethical dilemmas, and other specific areas of controversy by well-known experts Ronald Bayer, Martin Benjamin, Dan W. Brock, Baruch A. Brody, H. Alta Charo, Lawrence Gostin, Bradford H. Gray, Kathi E. Hanna, Elizabeth Heitman, Thomas Nagel, Steven Shapin, and Charles M. Swezey.

How society’s undervaluing of life puts all of us at risk—and the groundbreaking economic measure that can fix it Like it or not, sometimes we need to put a monetary value on people's lives. In the past, government agencies used the financial "cost of death" to monetize the mortality risks of regulatory policies, but this method vastly undervalued life. Pricing Lives tells the story of how the government came to adopt an altogether different approach--the value of a statistical life, or VSL—and persuasively shows how its more widespread use could create a safer and more equitable society for everyone. In the 1980s, W. Kip Viscusi used the method to demonstrate that the benefits of requiring businesses to label hazardous chemicals immensely outweighed the costs. VSL is the risk-reward trade-off that people make about their health when considering risky job choices. With it, Viscusi calculated how much more money workers would demand to take on hazardous jobs, boosting calculated benefits by an order of magnitude. His current estimate of the value of a statistical life is $10 million. In this book, Viscusi provides a comprehensive look at all aspects of economic and policy efforts to price lives, including controversial topics such as whether older people's lives are worth less and richer people's lives are worth more. He explains why corporations need to abandon the misguided cost-of-death approach, how the courts can profit from increased application of VSL in assessing liability and setting damages, and how other countries consistently undervalue risks to life. Pricing Lives proposes sensible economic guideposts to foster more protective policies and greater levels of safety in the United States and throughout the world.

"This text is intended for a one-semester introductory course."--Page 1.

This study analyzes American, Vietnamese and Japanese personal values, attempting to understand how it can be ethnographers find large differences in values between cultures, yet empirical surveys find relatively small, almost trivial differences in personal values between cultures.

From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.

Emerging Dynamics: Science, Energy, Society and Values focuses on the impact of science, science-based technology and scientific values on present-day humanity and its future. The book advocates for a science willing to accommodate both human values and scientific facts. The four main subjects focused on throughout the text are: The overwhelming impact of modern science and science-based technology on virtually every aspect of human life Human values and their significance for science and society The need for mutual accommodation between scientific values and the traditional values of society The fundamental role of energy for civilization and society. The book cuts across scientific disciplines and looks at modern civilization through the knowledge provided by the physical, chemical, biomedical and other branches of natural science. The book is unique in its holistic approach, combining knowledge acquired by deduction, reduction-induction, and experimental scientific methods with knowledge acquired through history, philosophy, the arts, faith and cultural traditions. Modern civilization’s most distinct characteristics are due to science, science-based technology and energy. The role of energy in the sustainability of civilization and the impact of biomedical science on man are especially emphasized throughout this timely book, making a case for a hopeful future based on both science and values. A science guided in its applications by human values and a value system cognizant of the facts of science and willing to accommodate them