Bioethics and natural law: the relationship in Catholic teaching.

In the discipline of Catholic moral theology, bioethics (traditionally described as medical ethics) has held a major place. The systematic development of bioethics has drawn principally upon a natural law ethic, supported by broader religious arguments. The purpose of this essay is to examine the status and role of natural law in Catholic teaching as it bears upon bioethics.     

Bioethics after the terror

Bioethics as a field has been fortunate that its values and concerns have mirrored the values and concerns of society. In light of the September 11th attacks, it is possible that we are witnessing the beginning of a transition in American culture, one fraught with implications for bioethics. The emphasis on autonomy and individual rights may come to be tempered by greater concern over the collective good. Increased emphasis on solidarity over autonomy could greatly alter public response to research abuses aimed at defense from bioterrorism, to privacy of genetic information, and to control of private medical resources to protect the public health.     

Honoring the Bios in Lutheran Bioethics

Abstract:  A Lutheran bioethic honors the body by being anti‐Gnostic (and finding moral wisdom in the body's limits), by being anti‐Pelagian (and requiring the reshaping of our disordered desires), and by being anti‐Sadducean (in affirming that the new creation, though continuous with and fulfilling the old, also transforms and perfects it in ways that go beyond the earthly life we know). Such an approach to bioethics is illustrated here through discussion of the way in which new reproductive technologies may distort our understanding of the relation between the generations, thereby losing sight of the bios in bioethics.     

Adverse implications for university teaching concealed in economically driven policies

Modern universities represent large economic operations fueled by funds that are increasingly derived from student tuition as government subsidies shrink. Student recruitment and retention are now mainly driven by the need for the dollars that students pay into the system. Policy that is responsive to these pressing economic realities, promulgated at all institutional levels, promotes professional behavior that encourages student retention while allowing this to occur through subtle sacrifice of the traditional essence of the university. A multiphase analysis relates the institution's economically driven policies on retention to their classroom implications and to other effects on the behavior of the teaching faculty.     

Student and faculty gender in ratings of university teaching quality

The aim of this study is to test the assertion that student and faculty gender, together with their possible interaction, have little or almost no real effect on student ratings of university teaching quality, taking into account the diversity of academic disciplines as a modulating variable. A sample of 1,304 student ratings from a university in Madrid, Spain, was selected out of a total of 236,862. The Complutense University Teachers Evaluation Questionnaire was administered to students at the Complutense University of Madrid for assessing teaching quality. This instrument operationalizes two main dimensions in evaluation of teaching in higher education: Teaching Competence and Motivational and Interactive Skills. When the results were analyzed, taking into consideration both possible statistical significance and effect size, they supported the proposed assertion. These results may have implications on certain areas of higher education.     

优巴斯关于国际生命伦理学的宣言

生命科学和医学科学提出了许多有关教育、伦理、法律和社会的重要问题,这些问题需要从本地、本国、国际等不同层面加以考虑。在第七次及以前历次筑波国际生命伦理学圆桌会议的讨论结束之后,在《优巴斯亚洲及国际生命伦理学杂志》陈述了其目标之后,在该杂志上的不同观点争论了十年之后,优巴斯伦理研究所和在本宣言上签名的人士,希望对国际生命伦理学强调下述原则：     

Bioethics in a Global Village

One goal of the transplant community is to seek ways to increase the number of people who are willing and able to donate organs. People in states between life and death are often medically excellent candidates for donating organs. Yet public policy surrounding organ procurement is a delicate matter. While there is the utilitarian goal of increasing organ supply, there is also the deontologic concern about respect for persons. Public policy must properly mediate between these two concerns. Currently the dead donor (dd) rule is appealed to as an attempt at such mediation. I argue that given the lack of consensus on a definition of death, the dd rule is no longer successful at mediating utilitarian and deontologic concerns. I suggest instead that focusing on a particular person's history can be successful.     

死后生殖问题的生命伦理学思考

生物科学和医疗技术的发展使死后生殖成为可能,但是,面对世界不同地域所发生的死后生殖案例,伦理和法律的争议层出不穷。试图从生命伦理学的基本原则入手,以尊重人、行善以及公平原则为基点,结合相关问卷调查结果,探讨争议的焦点及成因,希望可以引发各个层面对相关问题的关注和讨论。     

死后生殖问题的生命伦理学思考

生物科学和医疗技术的发展使死后生殖成为可能,但是,面对世界不同地域所发生的死后生殖案例,伦理和法律的争议层出不穷.试图从生命伦理学的基本原则入手,以尊重人、行善以及公平原则为基点,结合相关问卷调查结果,探讨争议的焦点及成因,希望可以引发各个层面对相关问题的关注和讨论.     

Freestanding Pragmatism in Law and Bioethics

This paper represents the first installment of alarger project devoted to the relevance of pragmatism forbioethics. One self-consciously pragmatist move would be toreturn to the classical pragmatist canon of Peirce, James andDewey in search of substantive doctrines or methodologicalapproaches that might be applied to current bioethicalcontroversies. Another pragmatist (or neopragmatist) move wouldbe to subject the regnant principlist paradigm to Richard Rorty'ssubversive assaults on foundationalism in epistemology andethics. A third pragmatist method, dubbed ``freestandingpragmatism' by its proponents, embraces a ``pragmatist' approachto practical reasoning without discernable moorings either to theclassical canon or to Rorty's neopragmatism. This thirdpragmatist approach to method in practical ethics is the subjectof this article. I begin with an examination of freestandingpragmatism in the theory of judicial decision making. I arguethat this version of legal pragmatism – so described on account ofits commitments to contextualism, instrumentalism, eclecticism,and freedom from grand theory – bears a striking resemblance tomuch self-described pragmatist work in bioethics today. Ifurther argue that if this is what we mean by ``pragmatism,' thenin a certain sense ``we are all pragmatists now.'     

Bioethics in the third millennium: some critical anticipations

Its promises to the contrary notwithstanding, bioethics is plural. There is a diversity of content-full moral undertandings of the good and the right. Moreover, there is no secular means in principle to set this diversity aside without begging the question. This moral diversity exists both as a sociological condition and as a moral epistemological constraint. Without succumbing to a metaphysical scepticism or moral relativism, the bioethics of the future, if it is to be honest, should learn how to live with robust moral diversity.     

Bioethics and the marginalization of mental illness

This paper explores why ethical issues associated with mental illness have been generally neglected in the literature and texts of the discipline of bioethics. I argue that the reasons for this are both philosophical and structural, involving the philosophical framework of principlism in bioethics, in particular the privileging of the principle of autonomy, and the institutional location and disciplinary boundaries of bioethics as a profession. Other contributing factors include developments outside of bioethics, in medicine and law and in the delivery patterns and funding sources of mental health services, and above all the pervasive stigma that attaches to mental illness. My goal is to show both how the attention bioethics could bring would benefit this neglected area of health care, and why attending to the issues surrounding mental illness would benefit bioethics in meeting its professional obligations as the public voice on matters of ethical significance in health care.