Suchergebnisse

When many people think of bioethics, they think of gripping
issues in clinical medicine such as end-of-life decision-making,
controversies in biomedical research such as that over work
with stem cells, or issues in allocating scarce health-care
resources such as organs or money. The term "bioethics"
may evoke images of moral controversies being discussed on news
programs and talk shows. But this "controversy of the
day" focus often treats ethical issues in medicine
superficially, for it addresses them as if they could be examined
and discussed in isolation from the context in which they are
situated. Such a focus on the latest controversies fails to
take into account that medicine is a social institution and
that the controversies in bioethics often reflect deeper social
and moral issues that transcend the boundaries of medicine and
ethics. If one moves beyond the issue-of-the-day approach to
bioethics, one can see that the field must address these deeper
issues.