Homepage " Publications " Polish publications " Bioethics as the philosophical basis of biomedical science

Bioethics as the philosophical basis of biomedical science

14 December 2022

Man is now confronted with ethical problems that hitherto ethics has either failed to recognise at all or, if it has, has made no serious attempt to resolve. The role of medicine (and thus the importance of the problems associated with it in a more or less strict manner) in the life of modern man is becoming ever greater. Doctors have the right to decide whether we are allowed to practise certain professions, to engage in certain sports, and they also rule on the insanity or uninsanity of people accused of crimes. These profound changes in consciousness thus boil down to one fundamental phenomenon: a change in our attitude to both life and death. Indeed, questions about the moral legitimacy of euthanasia, abortion and organ transplants are in fact questions about the end or beginning of human life. Thus, we are now faced with an entirely new approach to death, and thus to bioethical problems. What position should ethics take towards this new approach? Well, it seems that the very establishment of bioethics as a separate discipline is the result of an attempt to meet these challenges. Whether we like it or not, bioethics is becoming a kind of ethical guideline for persons and institutions making decisions about the life or death of another human being. In practice, however, it turns out that this bioethical signpost points in a more or less precise direction: from the formulation of general ethical theories, within which the problems of bioethics are also solved, to statements declaring the moral permissibility (or impermissibility) of certain actions towards concrete persons. The philosopher should uphold universally accepted moral values and be aware (to himself and to others) of the consequences for morality and society of the growing tendency to make moral compromises with the demands of efficiency and effectiveness. In turn, it should be a moral imperative for him to guard against such compromises. The impression is given, however, that bioethics also overlooks these ultimate aims and mechanisms, focusing on the behaviour and moral responsibility of the individual, but losing sight of the wider social and cultural structures. In order to perceive and properly evaluate these goals, bioethics can neither become part of the institution itself, nor remain a strictly philosophical, academic speculation. Interdisciplinarity appears in this context as a requirement that bioethics will sooner or later have to meet.

https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/files/Studia_Ecologiae_et_Bioethicae/Studia_Ecologiae_ et_Bioethicae-r2003-t1/Studia_Ecologiae_et_Bioethicae-r2003-t1-s177- 188/Studia_Ecologiae_et_Bioethicae-r2003-t1-s177-188.pdf