MIDTERMS BIOETHS

• Bioethics is a branch of applied ethics that studies the philosophical, social, and legal issues arising in medicine and the life sciences
• Bioethics aims to attain an appropriate integration between life and ethics, not just a mere juxtaposition but a real interaction
• Bioethics can be understood broadly as employing biological sciences to improve humankind’s quality of life or more narrowly as the study of the relation between life and ethical values in medical work
• Healthcare ethics is the collection of principles that guide doctors, nurses, and other clinicians in providing medical care, combining moral beliefs with a sense of duty towards others
• Ethical School of Thought 1 focuses on Relativism, Situationism, Pragmatism, and Utilitarianism
• Ethics within healthcare are crucial for recognizing dilemmas, making good judgments based on values, and staying within governing laws
• Bioethics deals with morality, moral rectitude, and the rightness and wrongness of human acts
• Bioethics as a practical science provides norms for the direction and regulation of human actions
• General ethics or normative ethics formulates universal concepts and principles serving as the foundation of morality, applied to resolve specific moral problems
• Professional ethics, a type of applied ethics, deals with moral precepts or rules guiding individuals in their professions like nursing ethics or teacher’s code of ethics
• Bioethics investigates practices and developments in life sciences and biomedical fields, focusing on ethical dilemmas concerning life, health, and death resulting from modern biological technology
• Medical ethics is the oldest phase of bioethical exploration, formulating ethical norms for healthcare professionals in treating patients
• Research ethics refers to the use of humans as experimental specimens, with historical examples like the Nuremberg Code attempting to humanize experiments using informed consent
• Public policy in bioethics emphasizes participatory decision-making in formulating public guidelines for clinical cases and biomedical research
• Ethical School of Thought 1 includes Ethical Relativism, claiming there are no universal moral principles, and standards of right or wrong are relative to a particular culture or society
• Attachment is a strong reciprocal emotional bond between an infant and a primary caregiver
• Schaffer and Emerson's 1964 study on attachment:

  • Aim: identify stages of attachment / find a pattern in the development of an attachment between infants and parents
  • Participants: 60 babies from Glasgow
  • Procedure: analysed interactions between infants and carers
  • Findings: babies of parents/carers with 'sensitive responsiveness' were more likely to have formed an attachment
• Freud's superego is the moral component of the psyche, representing internalized societal values and standards
• John Rawls's concept of social morality emphasizes the ultimate dignity of human beings and introduces the concept of social justice, recognizing our duties to ourselves and to others
• Rawls explains "the original position" to clarify his concept of justice and introduces social justice, emphasizing duties to ourselves and others
• Rawls's Theory of Justice includes the principles that every individual is inviolable, erroneous theory is tolerable in the absence of a better one, and individual liberties should be restricted to maintain equality of opportunity
• Immanuel Kant's ethics, also known as deontologism, focuses on duty or obligation, claiming that morality is exclusively within the human personality
• Kant's ethics state that the rightness or wrongness of an action is solely a matter of intent, motive, and will, with morality found in the nature from which an act is done
• Kant's view questions what makes an act moral and distinguishes between acting morally out of duty versus other reasons
• Kant asserts that one acts morally only when doing what one is obliged to do, emphasizing that moral acts are done out of duty and not for other reasons
• Kant distinguishes between acting in accord with duty (non-moral) and acting from a sense of duty (moral) based on recognizing a special obligation brought about by a relationship
• Kant's ethics differentiate between perfect duties (always observed) and imperfect duties (observed only on some occasions)
• Kant's Categorical Imperative mandates an action without any condition, while the Hypothetical Imperative includes a command with a corresponding condition or limitation
• Kant's ethics in the medical context emphasize treating people as ends, not just means, and following the categorical imperative to determine right actions
• William David Ross's ethics introduce the distinction between actual duty (real duty in a given situation) and prima facie duty (duty that directs what one ought to perform when other factors are not considered)
• Ross's ethics recognize exceptions for every rule and suggest that rightness and goodness are the only two moral properties, with the importance of non-moral circumstances surrounding an act
• Ross's ethics propose resolving conflicting duties by acting in accordance with the stronger or more stringent prima facie duty, or the one with a greater balance of rightness or wrongness
• Ross's ethics rely on intuitionism, where moral intuitions guide decision-making in situations of conflicting duties
• Ross's ethics present 7 types of prima facie duties, including duty of fidelity, duty of reparation, duty of gratitude, duty of justice, duty of beneficence, duty of self-improvement, and duty of non-maleficence
• Rawls' Theory of Justice:

  • John Rawls synthesized utilitarianism and deontological views of Kant and Ross
  • Rawls talks about the "original position" to elucidate his concept of justice, where individuals under the veil of ignorance make fair choices
  • A just society is not one where everyone is equal but where inequalities must be legitimate
  • Rawls introduced an order of priority for duties, including equal access to healthcare
  • Rawls perceives the need to rank duties to resolve conflicts
• Rawls justifies paternalism in decision-making when individuals are unable to decide for themselves
• Rawls sanctions voluntary consent for research subjects based on the individual's right to decide on risks
• Rawls does not permit people in the original position to know their goals, plans, interests, or purposes, contradicting his notion of justice as fairness
• Natural Law Ethics:

  • Founded on human nature, unchangeable and universal
  • The natural moral law is the divine law expressed in human nature
  • Scholastic Ethics, Christian/Roman Catholic Ethics, and Natural Law Ethics are interconnected
• Synderesis is the inherent capacity of every individual to distinguish good from bad, guiding actions based on reason