Talk:Bioethics

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[edit] Major Vandalism

Just deleted some major vandalism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.173.65.225 (talk) 14:12, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Claims that this article supports the political left

The intro shows a clear leaning to the politcal left, with how it brings up that "many bioethicists are simply christians in sheeps clothing" point.

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Deleting references to the implicit politics shows a "clear leaning" to the political right. That many conservatives see bioethics as a possible replacement for abortion issue or as a means for expanding the anti-abortion constituency is no secret. Avoiding the all too obvious is hardly the expression of a neutral point of view.

Why is this a lean to the right? You are attributing views to me that I do not have. As for "avoiding the obvious", you may miss the point. We cannot make anti-right (or anti-left) political statements in an encyclopedia. See our [[[NPOV]] policy for more details. I would agree with you that people on the political right are using certain bioethical issues as a hammer to push their policies. So do people on the political left. (The question, who is right to do so?!) But that isn't quite the subject of this specific article; this specific article is about the field of philosophy known as bioethics. I agree with you that a discussion of how bioethics has been used for political purposes can and should be written; however, it would be more appropriate if it is only briefly discussed here, and then linked to another article.

[edit] Request for info on Christian bioethics

Why is there no list of Christian bioethics references?

Sadly, no one has yet volunteered the time to research this issue. It would be a great idea if someone did some research on this topic. Which universities, or seminaries, have specialists in Christian bioethics? Who are the most respected Christian authorities in this field? What are their major works? How do the stands of Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christianity compare and contrast on these issues? Any help would be appreciated. RK 03:16, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Religion

Religion has very little role to play (if any) in bioethics. It appears that a group of people have actively subverted the wikipedia without anyone noticing. --Viriditas 00:47, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This is manifestly untrue. Bioethics has been in the realm of religion for centuries (e.g. suppressing autopsies during the Middle Ages), and many prominent bioethicists use essentially religious motives. Your language has a tinge of paranoia - what kind of subversion are you insinuating? JFW | T@lk 01:06, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I agree with JFW. I a know that a large body of writing on this issue has developed within the Jewish community, and I have come across corresponding writings from Christian points of view. Bioethics is a merely a sub-set of ethics, and ethics is always entwined with religion. Any religion that doesn't concern itself with ethics doesn't deserve the name "religion". RK 01:16, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
That is a common misconception. Religion has very little role to play in contemporary bioethics. Morality is not the exclusive domain of theists, nor is religion necessary for people to act ethically. In 1970, biochemist Van Rensselaer Potter coined the term bioethics in order to fuse medical, ecological, and ethical concerns required to make choices that would determine the survival of humanity in the future. According to Potter, a global and ethical approach to sustainable development (or rather sustainability) is the closest approximation of bioethics. Essentially, it is the integration of all ethics in relation to human values (which admittedly contains religion). Since the time that Potter coined the term, it has taken a more clinical, and less ecological approach, sometimes in opposition to Potter's intended meaning. While theists may try to take credit for Potter's term, religion doesn't appear to have a central role to play in its modern development, but Potter did allow for the consideration of religious ethics in his use of the term. In my opinion, religion has been historically opposed to bioethics, as its moral treatment of animals, people, and civilizations clearly demonstrates. While I have suggested that you are using a different definition than V. R. Potter, I am also forced to admit that Potter was inclusive when it came to religious values. It should be stated that Potter did not intend for bioethics to be used as a vehicle for representing any particular religious value. Without the need for dogma and ideology, Potter's bioethics were designed to facillitate the survival of humanity through a sound, scientific approach. For a discussion of just some of the problems involved with bioethics and religion, see this article: The Scientist 8(10):12, May. 16, 1994 --Viriditas 07:32, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Viriditas, I agree with you, and a NPOV formulation of your comments above should be in the article. Also, the distinction between medical ethics and bioethics should be made. The religious are involved in bioethics, but in large part it is a secular activity. The article has more weight on the religious stuff, but that could just mean the article needs to be expanded.  :)

I disagree. See my comments below under the heading "secular ethicists". --brian0918™ 20:31, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A remarkably similar disproportional insertion of religious bibliographical material was also undertaken in the Business Ethics article. Caravaca 12:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is the question of religion being begged?

Viriditas's claim that "religion has been historically opposed to bioethics" in areas ranging over "the treatment of animals, people, and civilizations" can only be made if one assumes at the outset that the discipline, less than four decades old, will arrive, or already has arrived, at a solid consensus on a highly rammified and quite specific set of normative deliverences. If this is so, then I'd think "bio-ethics" would have to be an ideology disguised as a discipline. --Didymus2 06:49, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm fairly certain that "bioethicists" already know what answer they want before they set out to "reason" why that answer is correct, (or, as they may put it, "reason what the correct answer is"). I took a bioethics class taught by an individual who wrote bioethical policy for the Clinton administration, and he admitted that he wrote it "the weekend before the deadline". Doctors regularly go to this guy with serious life or death questions about their patients, and he gets to determine their fates, based on an arbitrary opinion backed up with "rational arguments". It seems to me that the whole field of bioethics is unethical. :) --brian0918™ 20:25, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
See the note about transhumanist reaction to it - because it usually is an ideology disguised as a discipline, in practice.--Anonymous 22:23, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "secular bioethicists"

Does this term sound like an oxymoron to anyone else? Bioethics (as with all ethics) is inherently founded on a belief in some sort of supernatural deity/thing which favors animate (aka "living") things and injects purpose into their existence, purpose that is external to us, and different from any purpose we create for ourselves. I guess this would make "religious bioethicists" an oxymoron as well, although you don't have to be "religious" to believe in some sort of supernatural entity/thing. I once got into an argument with a TA for the course I mentioned in the section above, and the core of his argument was that "it seems like there should be a way to experimentally determine moral answers." (read naturalistic fallacy and is-ought problem to see why that's impossible) --brian0918™ 20:19, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • There are such things as ethics based on the non-supernatural. See, for example, Objectivist_ethics. Or "ethics of greed" revolving around the concept of resources (money, power, friends, emotional well-being...anything that can be accumulated or given up through one's actions), taking as the premise that every human being (or sentient, for certain biotech sci-fi) has as an inherent goal the maximization of personal "resources" (although different resources may be desired by different people). E.g., "Thou shalt not kill, for then thy neighbors need not spend resources defending against you - but only insofar as they are likely to return the favor, so that you need not spend resources defending against them. In the very rare case where thy neighbors will heap violence upon thee even if thou art peaceful, then thou may slaughter them and be done with it, so that thou does not have to spend resources defending against them in the future. But be absolutely certain that this is the case before initiating violence, as history shows that most who believe violence to be necessary have been wrong, with horrible consequences." Just an example.
    • I'm fine with your example, but only because it is not really a "should" statement. If it simply said "Thou shalt not kill", then it would be, but your version is what I call a "conditional should", similar to "if you don't want to get hit by a car, don't walk in the road." Such statements are perfectly reasonable. Stating that there are universal "shoulds", or that there is purpose external to ourselves (such as stating that "our purpose in life is to live"... or, in a more extreme example, that "the purpose of my eyes is to see", although this may just be a question of wording/semantics) invites the need for some sort of supernatural entity which creates the concept of purpose and applies it to situations. --brian0918™ 23:07, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Ah, but even religious ethics are "conditional should" statements in that case. "Thou shalt not kill, because God said so." One can not say the "because God said so" part, because that's the reason for all ethics in that line (either God said so, God made it so, you'll be damned if you don't, or something like that), but it's still there.
        • One can be shown to be true, whereas the other can't. It can be shown that on average, if you jump out in front of a car, you are more likely to be hit than if you hadn't, thus the conditional "if you don't want to be hit by a car, you shouldn't jump out in front of them," whereas it can't be shown that "if you don't want to go to Hell, you shouldn't commit murder." --brian0918™ 21:18, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • Immanuel Kant disproved this assumption more than two centuries ago. While morals spring from religious belief, ethics can exist with or without religious belief. See categorical imperative. Durova 19:01, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
          • Although you might want to check Plato and Aristotle on this--morality to them, is objective, resides in human nature, and is not tied to religion. This is the basis for the Natural Law foundation of the English Common Law and the original American legal system before the 1970s. The idea that ethics is different from morality is a new argument; historically, they were considered the precise same thing. The distinction came about the late 1960s when some Roman Catholic politicians wanted to support abortion rights, yet were not willing to face possible excommunication. The famous statement of U.S. Senator Kennedy said something like "I personally oppose abortion but I wouldn't want to impose my view on anyone else", and is a classic attempt at creating an ethics/morality distinction. The classical view is that private morality and public ethics are one and the same thing. The "Divine Command" theory of morality—where some actions are good because God says so—comes from Protestant Christianity, and isn't a part of the Orthodox Christian, Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, or Islamic moral systems. I believe the same separation between morality and the supernatural also exists in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian systems. Something that all of these moral systems have in common is that they are based on a philosophical anthropology, or a conception of humanity and human nature. Modern systems are unique in that they completely do away with anthropology, for example, in Kant's Categorial Imperative, which does not address the nature of the person at all. --Marcusscotus1 01:29, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
            • I'll grant you Aristotle. Plato's position defies easy characterization. How do you trace the English common law from them? I take issue with your assertion that the distinction between public and private morals is an outward pose. I have made similar distinctions with perfect sincerity: I would want all possible lifesaving care for myself in a medical emergency, yet I honor living wills - including my mother's. I've also heard plenty of Orthodox Jews explain their observances in terms of divine command. All of this strays from the OP: how do you contend with the widespread presumption that every belief system of right and wrong springs from religious faith? Durova 07:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Transhumanist biologists see their work as inherently ethical ? o.O

"Transhumanist biologists in particular can be prone to this misunderstanding, as they see their work as inherently ethical, and attacks on it as unethical."

Is there a reference to back this up ? I'm quite skeptic about the "transhumanist biologists see their work as inherently ethical" part. Flammifer 9 July 2005 13:02 (UTC)

Are you crazy? Transhumanism is a type of humanism! A secular movement in ethics!

[edit] Utilitarian and Neoconservative? bioethics

My understanding is that the most influential bioethics professors today are Peter Singer (Utilitarian) and Francis Fukuyama (Neoconservative). You don't have an article without mentioning Singer, and Fukuyama is/was extremely influential in political circles. Spiritual drug use? How is this relevant? Maybe if that page actually discussed the spiritual use of the intellegence enhancing drugs which don't yet exist, but it dosn't. Christian bioethics? Sure, they have views on bioethics, but they don't usually use the word. It would be cheaper to just provide links to a bunch of stem-cell contraversy and abortion wikipedia pages. People like Singer and Fukuyama have moved well beyond this to discussing how to regulate implants and genetic engineering of humans, which is what people today really want to learn about when they look up bioethics.. and that is why we get all the transhumanism talk.

  • If people want to learn about what is ethical in biology, they need only flip a coin. Better that than tricking oneself into believing that there are "expert opinions" on such matters. -- BRIAN0918  15:13, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Ethics—morality—requires rational decisionmaking. Flipping a coin to determine right or wrong values is equivalent to saying that there are no right or wrong decisions, and that all is permissible. Currently, the Utilitarians hold sway in bioethcs, nd Neoconservatism is just another form of Utilitarianism. Proponents of objective morality tend to be religious. Proponents of Utilitarian morality tend to be irreligious. --Marcusscotus1 01:42, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Just FYI, your understanding is wrong. Fukuyama is not a bioethicist, he's an economist, historian and philosopher who has dabbled in bioethics. He is not anywhere near a foremost expert in the field, however. Singer is an influential utilitarian philosopher, and important in animal rights, but he is not an influential bioethicist. Unfortunately, as I understand wiki rules, I'm out for actually contributing content to this page, but I thought I'd at least toss this clarification in. If you want to look at the influential people who founded the field, Al Jonsen has a very good book on the subject (and he does include the theologians, as well as secular philosophers and medical professionals). Current influential people are already listed in the notable bioethicists on this page. Loiosh 04:18, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Religion, Philosophy, and Bioethics

"It's all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!" -- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia

There seems to be several strains of thought here: (1) Bioethics is religion in disguise; (2) Religion should have no part in bioethics; (3) Bioethics should not be imposed on researchers

Bioethics is simply a part of the subject of ethics, which is a part of philosophy, which "is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level." Philosophy may seem like religion at times (see (1) above), because of such subjects as the existence of God, the nature of being, and so forth, but these are completely respectable parts of the subject. Philosophy doesn't deal with relevations, scripture, and rites, which are in the domain of religion.

Regarding (3) above, anytime you propose a proper way of acting or pass a law regulating something, you are presupposing some sort of ethics, if even obliquely. Ethics is not a private matter; even Positive Law, which attempts to separate the Law and morality, has an ethical basis.

Religion often has a lot to say about ethics (see (2) above), but this article should clearly indicate when arguments are based on the "Divine Command" theory of ethics, which is religion, not philosophy. Some religions, such as Catholicism, traditionally base its ethics on philosophy, and not "Divne Command". Liberal religion usually holds the mainstream ethical view, based on philosophical materialsim.

This article should have a stronger philosophical basis, and the philosophical assumptions of each of the major bioethics systems should be clearly described.

-- Marcusscotus1 21:02, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of bioethicists

I did a quick Google search and came up with this list of prominet bioethicists, although I'm not sure "how prominent". It could be the raw material for additions to this article.

Leon Kass, Glenn McGee, Thomas Murray, Ruth Macklin, Peter Singer, Samuel Gorovitz, Edmund Pellegrino, Alexander Capron, Paul Ramsey, Arthur Caplan, Joseph Fletcher, Robert Veatch, Matthew K. Wynia, Nigel Cameron, Rebecca S. Dresser, William F. May, Suzanne Holland, Karen LeBacqz, Laurie Zoloth, David Magnus, Bernard Nathanson, Margaret Somerville -- Marcusscotus1 23:21, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

What about Michel Foucault ? Madness and Civilization was more sociology, but "The Birth of the clinic" and several of his essays were about bioethics and the construct of disease.

I have added Stuart J. Youngner (chair of the Department of Bioethics, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University) and Stephen G. Post (Professor of Bioethics, Department of Bioethics, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University; also editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Bioethics, 3rd Edition).

[edit] Nuffield Council on Bioethics

--212.32.56.51 16:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)I should be very grateful if you would consider adding a link to the UK Nuffield Council on Biothics under the links section of the Bioethics article.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics examines ethical issues raised by new developments in biology and medicine. Established by the Nuffield Foundation in 1991, the Council is an independent body, funded jointly by the Foundation, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.

The Council has achieved an international reputation for addressing public concerns, and providing independent advice to assist policy makers and stimulate debate in bioethics.

www.nuffieldbioethics.org

Done. Doc Tropics 19:48, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Specific question of (possible) application of bioethics

I'm wondering what folks here think of this, which is essentially an experimental pest-control scheme which provokes insects to dismember and murder each other. Seems rife with possible bioethics applications to me.

I've emailed the author of the article and am waiting for a response. +ILike2BeAnonymous 19:36, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links

I agree with User:Burlywood that the External links section is too long. Should we consider deleting some possibly innappropriate links according to Wikipedia:External links guidelines. --Loremaster 16:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

From an editor's standpoint (I'm not familiar with the topic) I have a few suggestions. The references section is for sources actually used to create the text of the article. All other "reference" entries can be removed. This has been suggested already on this talk page. External links whose topic is substantially covered in another article can be converted into an internal link and placed in the "See also" section. If it isn't appropriate there, then it doesn't belong is an EL either. Links on medical ethics can be removed because that topic has its own article making it redundant and slightly off-topic here. Ideally the list should be trimmed to five or less external links that would be helpful to a reader (don't make the reader do the sorting and evaluating; do that work for him or her upfront). In general, links that aren't about bioethics don't belong. Wikipedia isn't a repository for links to organizations and groups, except for the one or two that have world-wide recognition. Burlywood 19:17, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I encourage you to work on this. --Loremaster 19:26, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I have removed all of the references on the basis of this and previous discussions on this page. A check of the history shows that they were mostly added about three year ago and were not used as references for material actually added to the article. Although my search of the history was not exhaustive, I found only one case where the article text was updated and a reference provided. Neither the added text nor the reference exist in the most recent revision. If there are items that are of general interest and appropriate for this article, they should be discussed here and then added as "Further reading". Burlywood 15:54, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Good. --Loremaster 20:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I have replaced all of the external links with a single link to the dmoz directory, as suggested by the WP:EL guideline. Additional links should be added to that site. If it is important to add an external link directly to this article, please discuss it here first. Undiscussed links will be removed. Burlywood 15:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. --Loremaster 17:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flags

I have removed both flags from this article, since they seem redundant to me, if not totally out of place with the extensive list of references and links provided already. --Poeticbent talk 01:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tone and style of article... integrate with medical ethics?

Hi. This article has many strengths and lots of good info and analysis. I made a few minor changes. For instance, bioethics is to be construed as a singular noun, despite the 's' at the end (see OED).

Nonetheless, the tone of the article is too much like an op-ed or essay. It's not so much a WP:POV problem as a matter of unencyclopedic style. I esp marked off a "Why bioethics?" section as problematic. Besides editing, it would help if some of these assertions/opinions could be referenced or deleted. It also sounds like an apologetics, which isn't needed in an article about any academic, professional or even moral advocacy subject.

It's important that the article not be a soapbox[1] about bioethics as rigorously academic. There's a clear diversity among notable folks (e.g., religious or popular writers) who identify themselves and their writings within bioethics -- and it isn't for wikipedia to exclude such less-academic types from bioethics.

Finally, we need to think about how to integrate this article with medical ethics. Let's answer: How did medical ethics serve as the grounding for bioethics in the 1960s-1970s? What are the commonalities and where specifically does bioethics diverge and expand from medical ethics? Again, such q's need to be answered without an opinionated or rigid stance on how either field "should be" defined, but rather recognizing the fluidity and overlap in how the discourses/fields have actually functioned. Thanks. HG | Talk 13:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


HG makes a good point. In the early years of the discipline, it might have made sense to single out a handful of names as leading voices (e.g., Ramsey, Englehardt). But what began as a sub-speciality that united philosophy, medicine, religion, and law has now become very much diluted, to the point that every campus in the U.S. will typically offer some courses in Bioethics, and where an increasing number of disciplines make important contributions that fall under the heading of "bioethics," such as medical anthropology.

This is not to say that some distinctons can't be made; clearly, many who would call themselves bioethicists are more interested in a kind of public activism than others, just as some can claim to have made foundational changes in the field (such as Singer's founding of the journal Bioethics) without their necessarily being regarded as experts per se. In that light, maybe trying to list "leading bioethicists" is counter-productive, and would be analogous to an attempt to list the leading scientists. For every name that was added, there would surely be questions about the appropriateness of that selection (I'd question whether this wiki article should list Gilligan as an influence on bioethics thought, for example.) The resulting discussion would probably not inform the way the article might if it set aside questions about such things and simply stressed major contributions and schools of thought.

Maybe a compromise position would be to identify several key turning points in the history of the field, such as the Belmont Report, the establishment of major programs in colleges, the growth of governmental committees, international conferences, and so on. C d h 01:06, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:49, 10 November 2007 (UTC)