Bioethics Critically Reconsidered by H. Tristram Engelhardt

Author:H. Tristram Engelhardt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

6.1 Introduction

In their critical retrospective on American bioethics, “Examining American Bioethics: Its Problems and Prospects”, Renée Fox and Judith Swazey diagnose numerous challenges they believe face the future of bioethics. They raise broad criticisms from the “secondary status accorded to virtues and qualities of the heart, like compassion, sympathy, kindness, and caring…”, to what they perceive as the “field’s relative inattention to ethical questions of social justice in American society…” and the “maintenance of a distinction between bioethical and human rights issues and of a line of demarcation between bioethics and international human rights law…” (2005, p. 363). Their conclusions include what they term an “admonitory statement” to the field of American bioethics and its role in the culture wars:The rancorousness has been conspicuous in statements made by bioethicists on both sides of the divide in professional publications, blog sites, and the media about matters such as embryonic stem cell research, therapeutic and reproductive cloning, genetic enhancement, other uses of fetal tissues and embryos, end-of-life issues, the place of religious thought and belief in ethical analysis, and about the potential dangers and harms as well as benefits that advances in medical science and technology can bring in their wake (2005, p. 369).

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