• DOI:10.1097/00004311-200107000-00003
• Corpus ID: 34038129

Bioethics: Using Its Historical and Social Context

@article{Belkin2001BioethicsUI,
  title={Bioethics: Using Its Historical and Social Context},
  author={Gary S. Belkin and Allan M. Brandt},
  journal={International Anesthesiology Clinics},
  year={2001},
  volume={39},
  pages={1-11}
}

• G. Belkin, A. Brandt
• Published 2001
• Medicine
• International Anesthesiology Clinics

On the one hand, bioethics seems an integral part of the landscape of medical practice. Ethics committees, clinical ethics journals, policies based on specific theories of informed consent and patient decision making are ubiquitous. However, on the other hand, questions arise, both within the bioethics literature and along corridors of hospitals and clinics, as to just how well bioethical theorizing reflects and meets the realities of clinical dilemmas and where it gets its authoritative voice. What does bioethical reasoning and writing know? What makes a particular ethical view count? We hope to address these important questions by thinking historically about the development of bioethics. In the course of doing so we briefly describe some of the major “schools” and approaches that have emerged in the field. But more importantly, rather than pick or choose among them, we encourage thinking about how and why these ways of thinking about medicine emerged. We do so to cast bioethics as less a worked-out expertise than a historically contingent reflection of anxieties about medical practice that can change. The question should be less “what method is best to know the ethical?” than “what are our needs and ethical questions, and who should participate in addressing them?”