From prescriptions to pain killers to transplantation of human organs, the perplexities of medical ethics extend far beyond the confines of medicine. This book offers over 100 engrossing case studies that guide the reader to an understanding of the ethical aspects of medical care. The cases illustrate dilemmas arising in everyday practice—what to tell a dying patient, selecting a surgical approach, choosing between brand-name and generic drugs—as well as the ethical consequences of advanced technology—prenatal diagnosis that might result in the decision to abort, or keeping an irreversibly comatose patient alive with support methods.

Robert M. Veatch first shows readers how to identify ethical issues and points out that an important element in making a decision is to identify the person responsible for it. Then, in analyzing the classical moral question "What is the right thing to do?" he cites situations that were actually faced by patients and medical professionals. He explores a number of specific ethical problems in contemporary medicine: abortion, sterilization, contraception, transplantation, hemodialysis, genetic counseling, and human experimentation, among others. The last chapter focuses on death and dying.

Ethical positions are never forced upon the reader. Instead, the author is careful to present alternatives and to discuss the consequences of a particular decision. His book is written for patients, their families and friends, nurses, technicians, counselors, social workers, physicians, employers, and lawyers—indeed for anyone affected by the burgeoning power of medical intervention.

There is an old song that goes, "Look down, look down, that lonesome road, before you travel on." Facing that lonesome road, the adult might travel on. Often, the child can't.

During her twenty-year career as a school social worker, Anne Stilwell worked with two thousand "problem" children. She and her husband, professional writer Hart Stilwell, present here twenty-one factual accounts of children who suffered rejection in the public schools.

Some of the children in these accounts are unusually bright and some are mentally retarded. They are belligerent and destructive or withdrawn. They are from broken homes or happy homes, from the slums or Middle America. They are blacks, Chicanos, and Anglos. There is only one common denominator among these children—tragedy.

Every classroom teacher will gain from this sympathetic evaluation of the problems faced by children in the public schools. No one who reads this book can remain unaware of major areas that call for deep concern on the part of educators and parents. The Stilwells have described school children and their problems and at the same time offered telling portraits of the families of which the youngsters are a part. In the struggle to see that the problem child has a chance to develop and advance within the limits of his or her ability, parents, teachers, administrators, and social workers must work together or all fail. When they fail, the child must walk alone.

The authors' objective in presenting these cases is to show what has happened and does happen, and to encourage others to work for change. A prominent educator describes their account as "an exceptionally worthwhile teaching document—stimulating, touching, well written, and honest."

While this book was originally written in 1972, the issue of rejection in the public schools is, sadly, still timely.

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Federalism and Regional Development is the resuit of the first German-American geography seminar, held at the University of Texas in September 1979. The chapters deal with the impact of geographic policy planning by various governmental agencies in both the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States, two countries with federal systems of government. Although various bureaucratic offices at the federal, state, county, and city levels became involved in spatial planning in both countries, no overall coordination of development planning existed. The contributors to this volume offer many theoretical and empirical perspectives on the evolution of federal policies and programs and their impact on geographic planning activities at all levels of government. The topics covered range from actual regional case studies in both countries to the framework of the agencies concerned with spatial planning. Numerous maps and tables document the data resources of the contributors and yield useful insights on the workings of the federal system.

It is often said that marriage in Islamic law is a civil contract, not a sacrament. If this is so, this means that the marriage contract is largely governed by the same rules as other contracts, such as sale or hire. But at the same time marriage is a profound concern of the Islamic scriptures of Qur’an and Sunna, and thus at the very core of the law and morality of Islam and of the individual, familial, and social life of Muslims. This volume collects papers from many disciplines examining the Muslim marriage contract. Articles cover doctrines as to marriage contracts (e.g., may a wife stipulate monogamy?); historical instances (e.g., legal advice from thirteenth-century Spain); comparisons with Jewish and canon law; contemporary legal and social practice; and projects of activists for women worldwide.

Demonstrating a new and powerful focus for comparative and historical inquiries into Islamic law and social practices, this book marks a fresh point of departure for the study of Muslim women.

This well-documented study discusses the social and economic changes in Shandong province before the influence of the West was felt at the end of the nineteenth century. The authors show that by the sixteenth century, commercial and handicraft towns linked to national and local markets had already begun to emerge. Urban growth was made possible by increased agricultural production, which in turn stimulated specialization and increased commercialization in the agricultural sector. Another important change in rural society at this time was the emergence of a new stratum of wealthy landlords who managed their estates with wage labor. Case studies of managerial landlords, who form the main focus of this study, are included as well as generalizations drawn from questionnaire materials.

Jing Su and Luo Lun wrote this book while they were young researchers at Shandong University in the late 1950s, using data they had gathered in the culturally relaxed period of the Hundred Flowers. In his Introduction, Endymion Wilkinson analyzes the authors’ thesis and concludes that their Leninist model is inapplicable to premodern Chinese history. The value of this study lies not so much in its conclusion that even without the impact of Western imperialism China would of itself have developed a capitalist society, but rather in the wealth of data the authors present, in this first in-depth study of a relatively advanced region in north China.

The recent body of case-study work on chaplaincy care synthesizes the inherent narrative nature of chaplaincy with the structured rigors of contemporary care research. This volume is composed of contributions from both practitioners and academic researchers, joining reflections on the challenges of case studies in chaplaincy care with specific results. Drawing on reflections on methodology and professionalization in chaplaincy, the volume hopes to contribute to answering the question of how and why chaplaincy works.

Based on extended interviews at the Culiprán fundo in Chile with peasants who recount in their own terms their political evolution, this is an in-depth study of peasants in social and political action. It deals with two basic themes: first, the authoritarian structure within a traditional latifundio and its eventual replacement by a peasant-based elected committee, and second, the events shaping the emergence of political consciousness among the peasantry. Petras and Zemelman Merino trace the careers of local peasant leaders, followers, and opponents of the violent illegal land seizure in 1965 and the events that triggered the particular action.

The findings of this study challenge the oft-accepted assumption that peasants represent a passive, traditional, downtrodden group capable only of following urban-based elites. The peasant militants, while differing considerably in their ability to grasp complex political and social problems, show a great deal of political skill, calculate rationally on the possibility of success, and select and manipulate political allies on the basis of their own primary needs. The politicized peasantry lend their allegiance to those forces with whom they anticipate they have the most to gain—and under circumstances that minimize social costs. The authors identify the highly repressive political culture within the latifundio—reinforced by the national political system—as the key factor inhibiting overt expressions of political demands.

The emergence of revolutionary political consciousness is found to be the result of cumulative experiences and the breakdown of traditional institutions of control. The violent illegal seizure of the farm is perceived by the peasantry as a legitimate act based on self-interest as well as general principles of justice—in other words, the seizure is perceived as a “natural act,” suggesting that perhaps two sets of moralities functioned within the traditional system.

The book is divided into two parts: the first part contains a detailed analysis of peasant behavior; the second contains transcriptions of peasant interviews. Combined, they give the texture and flavor of insurgent peasant politics.