The Need for Bioethics
Ethical Dilemmas in Biology & Medicine
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Is bioethics really such a critical issue for society today? Even if it didn't exist and we had to invent it today, it would involve the application of ethical principles and arguments to medical and biological issues. So what, if anything, is so special or unique about these issues that requires its own field of ethical inquiry?
Although medical professionals are educated to handle medical triage situations which involve technical questions about who has the best chance of living, neither they nor other members of society are necessarily trained for ethical triage situations. In our pluralistic society, we are faced with a wonderful diversity of values and ethical ideals, but we don't seem able to tell which values need to be employed when and which ethical dilemmas need our most immediate attention.
One of the results seems to be that we are forced to deal with one crisis after another. Our lack of sound reasoning and coherent values prevents us from engaging in the careful, advanced deliberations that would make it easier for us to handle new situations. Bioethics today is too much a matter of crisis management and not enough of reasoned discourse.
Just what are these crises which we keep facing? Probably the most immediately obvious type of crisis is the one occasioned by rapidly advancing medical technology. Our abilities to both understand and manipulate the very essence of who we are, whether that is identified with our DNA or our most private thoughts, improves on an almost daily basis.
For example, what will we do when the first cloned human is created in a laboratory? Much of the basic technology for such an achievement is already in place - it is conceivable that we might be able to do such a thing within the next century. Will it have the same rights as others? Should it even be permitted, legally?
While the advancement of medical technology creates the most obvious source of problems in bioethics, it is certainly not the only one. In the not-too-distant past, almost all of the medical ethics which a doctor had to deal with were confined to the very personal relationship and interaction between doctor and patient; whatever else existed in the field was minimal and of little general concern.
Today, however, the framework of medical ethics has been expanded to include much more. Medical practice is no longer constrained by the relationships within the individual medical practice. We have to deal with massive insurance companies, the allocation of limited medical resources, the amount of time medical residents are forced to work, the privacy of medical records, and so much more.
These issues will only continue to multiply alongside the increasing complexity of modern society. We can either try to deliberate about these issues in advance or we can wait until a crisis occurs and we are forced to deal with it right away, without the chance for careful discussion. Which makes more sense?
A special field of bioethics is needed because, for better or for worse, the coming century will probably be best described as the Biological Century or the Biological Age (in contrast to the Industrial Age that the West so recently experienced). Not only advances in medical science, but advances in many other fields will likely have biological components as well. We can't hide our heads in the sand and pretend that difficult questions aren't on their way - indeed, we already know about many of them, or at least their broad outlines.
A failure to address them now, while we still have time, would be a moral failure and a failure of courage. We should place very close attention to the advances made in medical technology and the changes made in how doctors are expected to work. We should be prepared to ask difficult questions about what is done with new technologies and how medical professionals operate. We all have an important stake in those answers. We deserve good answers.
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