The biological revolution, with its attendant technological powers to alter nature and human nature, demands fundamental and cautionary reflection on questions of the highest ethical importance. In this thoughtful book on contemporary issues in bioethics, Stephen G. Post explores nine major topics ranging from birth and adolescence to aging and death. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Post clearly illuminates the issues, probes the ethical alternatives, and examines the cultural changes that shape current presuppositions about the right and good. This book will be of interest to scholars in bioethics, philosophy, and religious studies; health-care professionals; and the general reader concerned with these pressing questions of life and death.

Stephen G. Post is president of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love at Stony Brook University.

"Finally we have a book in bioethics that refuses to be theory-driven. Instead, Post shows how attending to what we actually care about, such as having children, caring for the aged, and even love, can give direction to issues in bioethics. This is a book filled with uncommon common sense and wisdom. I heartily recommend it to anyone."

1. Designer Babies, Selective Abortion, and Human Perfection

2. The Moral Meaning of Relinquishing an Infant: Reflections on Adoption

3. Adolescents in Time of AIDS

4. Psychiatry and the Challenge of Religious Toleration

5. American Culture and Good Death

6. The Covenant of Basic Caring

7. Old-Age-Based Rationing, Dementia, and Quality of Life

8. The Legacy of Racial Hygiene: Death and Data

9. The Emergence of Species Impartiality: A Medical Critique of Biocentrism