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 accountWhat moral principles should guide decisions in medicine, biology and biotechnology as scientific and technological capability advances? 1 Key DebateWhether 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 accountWhether 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)
Sources
1. Bioethics (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLead 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.
View the Source 2. The Ethics of Abortion (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationSection 1.2, the violinist case objectionQuote, 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.
Philosophy of Medicine (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: Philosophy of Medicine, Lead sectionQuote, 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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