Bioethics Notes

Bioethics

• Deals with the rightness or wrongness of an action related to life.

Inception of Bioethics

• Fritz Jahr (1927): Advocated extending Kant's respect for persons to all life forms.

• Van Rensselaer Potter: Defined bioethics as the science of survival in an ecological sense.

Spheres of Bioethics

• Academic Bioethics: Focuses on theoretical and practical aspects of medicine, including clinicians' obligations and values in the biomedical context.

• Public Policy and Law Bioethics: Addresses how legal institutions should regulate clinical and research practices.

• Clinical Ethics: Aims to improve patient care by incorporating bioethics into clinical practice.

Principles of Bioethics

• Respect for Persons

• Inviolability of Life

• Beneficence

• Justice

• Non-Maleficence

Issues in Bioethics

• Brain-Death

• Roe v. Wade

• Karen Ann Quinlan's Story

Beginning-of-Life Issues

• Abortion

• Cloning

• Assisted Reproduction

Sustenance-of-Life Issues

• Organ Transplant

• Health Resource Allocation

• Genetic Medical Procedures

End-of-Life Issues

• Euthanasia

• Persistent Vegetative State

• Brain Death

Information-and-Research Issues

• Truth-telling

• Informed Consent

• Use of Humans in Research

• Confidentiality