Bioethics Guidance at the crossroads of decisions

What Is Bioethics?
Ethics is a philosophical discipline pertaining to notions of good and bad, right and wrong
our moral life in community. Bioethics is the application of ethics to the field of medicine and
healthcare. Ethicists and bioethicists ask relevant questions more than provide sure and
certain answers.
What is the right thing to do and the good way to be? What is worthwhile? What are
our obligations to one another? Who is responsible, to whom and for what? What is the
fitting response to this moral dilemma given the context in which it arises? On what moral
grounds are such claims made?
Bioethicists ask these questions in the context of modern medicine and healthcare. They
draw on a pluralistic plethora of traditions, both secular and religious, to spawn civil
discourse on contentious issues of moral difference and others on which most people agree.
Bioethicists foster public knowledge and comprehension both of moral philosophy and
scientific advances in healthcare. They note how medical technology can change the way we
experience the meaning of health and illness and, ultimately, the way we live and die.
Bioethics is multidisciplinary. It blends philosophy, theology, history, and law with medicine,
nursing, health policy, and the medical humanities. Insights from various disciplines are
brought to bear on the complex interaction of human life, science, and technology. Although
its questions are as old as humankind, the origins of bioethics as a field are more recent and
difficult to capture in a single view.
When the term bioethics was first coined in 1971 (some say by University of Wisconsin
professor Van Rensselaer Potter; others, by fellows of the Kennedy Institute in Washington,
D.C.), it may have signified merely the combination of biology and bioscience with
humanistic knowledge. However, the field of bioethics now encompasses a full range of
concerns, from difficult private decisions made in clinical settings, to controversies
surrounding stem cell research, to implications of reproductive technologies, to broader
concerns such as international human subject research, to public policy in healthcare, and to
the allocation of scarce resources. This array of interest is neatly summarized under the rubric
of the Centre for Practical Bioethics four domains: Aging and End of Life, Clinical and
Organizational Ethics, Life Sciences, and Disparities of Health and Healthcare.

What Does It Accomplish?

Interdisciplinary dialogue contributes to the fields unique merit by applying the foundational
disciplines of philosophy and theology, and incorporating perspectives from various
other disciplines including sociology, medicine, nursing, anthropology, and law. Significant
questions are addressed in bioethics: the ends and purposes of the life sciences
and healthcare, the meanings and implications of distributive justice, and issues in global
healthcare. Bioethicists explore even deeper issues such as the meaning of life and death, pain
and suffering, and rights and responsibilities.
As the field continues to evolve, bioethics has become a prominent force in legislation and
public policy, and in other practical applications of theoretical principles. Some would argue
that what began as a multi-disciplinary field of study is now a full-fledged discipline in its
own right. Bioethics has a burgeoning literature, with journals and publishers. There are
hundreds of vocational specialists in clinical ethics consultation, and others in bioethics
departments within traditional academia. There now are many programs of training and
education, ranging from certificates to Masters degrees and even a few PhD programs in
Bioethics available at premiere institutes around the world. There are guilds and societies for
bioethicists, the largest being the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. ASBH has
commissioned a standing committee to address the lack of a code of ethics for clinical
ethicists, and it is developing a certification process, as well. The same is needed in our
country to counter the malpractices amongst our own fraternity and to bring back the god like
aura associated with our profession. Today, bioethics is not only an abstract concept but a
way of life which each of us should inculcate and uplift the true spirit of mankind. Bioethics
may well have grown up.

By Shiv Joshi
President,
Bioethics Students Committee,
Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences,Wardha