Examining American Bioethics: Its Problems and Prospects
In 1986, philosopher-bioethicist Samuel Gorovitz published an essay entitled “Baiting Bioethics,” in which he reported on various criticisms of bioethics that were “in print, or voiced in and around … the field” at that time, and set forth his assessment of their legitimacy. He gave detailed attenti...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics 2005-10, Vol.14 (4), p.361-373 |
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Zusammenfassung: | In 1986, philosopher-bioethicist Samuel Gorovitz published an essay
entitled “Baiting Bioethics,” in which he reported on various
criticisms of bioethics that were “in print, or voiced in and around
… the field” at that time, and set forth his assessment of
their legitimacy. He gave detailed attention to what he judged to be the
particularly fierce and “irresponsible attacks” on “the
moral integrity” and soundness of bioethics contained in two papers:
“Getting Ethics” by philosopher William Bennett and
“Medical Morality Is Not Bioethics,” coauthored by us.
Gorovitz attributed some of the criticisms that bioethics was eliciting to
the fact that this new, rapidly rising, and increasingly visible field had
brought “scholars and practitioners together who otherwise would
have little exposure to one another's disciplines. Their interactions
are mutually enriching at times,” he declared, “but mutually
baffling and even infuriating at other times.” In this latter
regard, he suggested that “perhaps” Fox and Swazey's
characterization of bioethics in the article he dissected “reflects
a general revulsion at endeavors they see as inadequately like the social
sciences or insufficiently respectful of them.” He went on to say
that despite his objections to our “complaints” about
bioethics—especially to our claim that “autonomy
[had] been an unduly emphasized value” in the
field—he had “a lingering sense” that there might be
“a grain of truth” in them. Gorovitz ended his essay with an
affirmation about the “benefit” that bioethics can derive from
“responsible” and even from “irresponsible”
criticism. “The unexamined discipline invites the philosopher's
critical scrutiny no less than the unexamined life,” he
aphoristically concluded.Research for this
paper was conducted, in part, during the Acadia Institute's Project
on Bioethics in American Society, for which Dr. Swazey was the PI and Dr.
Fox the CO-PI. The project was supported by grants from the Greenwall
Foundation, the National Library of Medicine (RO1 LM 06893), and the
National Science Foundation's Program on Societal Dimensions of
Engineering, Science, and Technology (SBR-9710570). The views in this
paper are the authors'. |
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ISSN: | 0963-1801 1469-2147 |
DOI: | 10.1017/S0963180105050504 |