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Bioethics

Ethics

Bioethics is both a field of study and a professional practice concerned with ethical issues related to health, primarily focused on humans but increasingly including animal ethics, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine and technology. It proposes a discussion of moral discernment in society, of what decisions are good or bad and why, and is often related to medical policy and practice as well as to broader questions of environment, well-being and public health; bioethics concerns itself with the ethical questions arising among the life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy, including values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal and environmental ethics, and public health.

Facts
Central QuestionSourced to the subject's own account
What moral principles should guide decisions in medicine, biology and biotechnology as scientific and technological capability advances? 1
Key Debate
Whether a fetus has full moral status as a person from conception, so that a pregnant woman's right to bodily autonomy is outweighed by the fetus's right to life, or whether even granting the fetus a right to life, that right does not obligate her to go on sustaining it with her own body, the objection Judith Jarvis Thomson raised with her violinist thought experiment. 2
Key DebateSourced to the subject's own account
Whether brain death is equivalent to true death, as the Organization of Islamic Conferences Islamic Fiqh Academy holds, or merely an intermediate state between life and death, as the Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences holds, a dispute with direct consequences for organ donation and end-of-life care. 1
Connections

Associated With

Source Bioethics (Wikipedia)
Source Philosophy of Medicine (Wikipedia)

Includes

Source Etienne Vermeersch, Wikipedia
Source Hans-Martin Sass (Wikipedia)
Source Onora O'Neill (Wikipedia)
Source Peter Singer (Wikipedia)
Source Wikipedia: Philip Kitcher
Source Wikipedia: Rachel Ankeny
Source Wikipedia: Reidar Lie
Sources
1. Bioethics (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia
  • Lead section
    Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health
  • Islamic bioethics discussion
    The Organization of Islamic Conferences Islamic Fiqh Academy (OIC-IFA) holds the view that brain death is equivalent to cardiopulmonary death, and acknowledges brain death in an individual as the individual being deceased. On the contrary, the Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences (IOMS) states that brain death is an "intermediate state between life and death" and does not acknowledge a brain dead individual as being deceased.
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2. The Ethics of Abortion (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationSection 1.2, the violinist case objection
Quote, Section 1.2, the violinist case objection
The violinist does have a right to life; yet it is permissible to kill him. Thus, it is not always true that one may not kill another human, just because that human has a right to life.
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Philosophy of Medicine (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: Philosophy of Medicine, Lead section
Quote, Associated With: Philosophy of Medicine, Lead section
By examining concepts that underlie medical practice, the philosophy of medicine provides some foundation to bioethics.
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Peter Singer (Wikipedia)
WikipediaIncludes: Peter Singer, Infobox: main_interests
Quote, Includes: Peter Singer, Infobox: main_interests
Applied ethics, Bioethics
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Wikipedia: Philip Kitcher
Includes: Philip Kitcher, Infobox: main_interests
Quote, Includes: Philip Kitcher, Infobox: main_interests
Philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, bioethics, philosophy of mathematics
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Etienne Vermeersch, Wikipedia
Includes: Etienne Vermeersch, Infobox: main_interests
Quote, Includes: Etienne Vermeersch, Infobox: main_interests
Philosophy of science, History of philosophy, History of Christianity, Bioethics, Environmental philosophy, Moral philosophy, cultural criticism
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Wikipedia: Rachel Ankeny
WikipediaIncludes: Rachel Ankeny, Infobox: main_interests
Quote, Includes: Rachel Ankeny, Infobox: main_interests
Philosophy of Biological & Biomedical Sciences Philosophy of Science Philosophy of Medicine Bioethics Food & Agricultural Ethics
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Hans-Martin Sass (Wikipedia)
Includes: Hans-Martin Sass, Lead
Quote, Includes: Hans-Martin Sass, Lead
Hans-Martin Sass (4 December 1935, February 6, 2023) was a bioethicist.
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Wikipedia: Reidar Lie
WikipediaIncludes: Reidar Lie, Infobox: main_interests
Quote, Includes: Reidar Lie, Infobox: main_interests
bioethics, research ethics
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Onora O'Neill (Wikipedia)
WikipediaIncludes: Onora O'Neill, Lead
Quote, Includes: Onora O'Neill, Lead
In 2001, she delivered the Gifford Lectures on Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics at the University of Edinburgh, and again in 2013 with a series titled From Toleration to Freedom of Expression.
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