Responsibility Revisited

Recent developments in medicine open up new possibilities for planning and shaping life. At the same time, this scope of new options and interventions also involves new forms and spheres of responsibilities. Elderly persons can be viewed as having a responsibility toward their families and partners to plan, via advance health care directives, the final stages of their life; individuals can be seen as responsible for late onset diseases when ignoring public incitements for a healthy life style; and medical professionals can be regarded as responsible for ‘‘wrongful’’ lives. These new forms of responsibility concern medical professionals, patients, families, and even society in general. The emerging idea of ‘‘responsibilisation’’ by the new politics of ‘‘life itself’’—as Rose (2006) termed it—warrants more attention and reflection. However, in bioethics, the term is notoriously unclear. This thematic issue of Medicine Studies tries therefore to explore the multiple meanings of responsibility in the context of biomedical practices in an interdisciplinary perspective. The five contributions to this special themed issue of Medicine Studies draw on a range of examples and disciplines to explore responsibility as a concept that reaches beyond discussions of autonomy to everyday aspects of relational ethics. Silke Schicktanz and Mark Schweda provide a general point of departure by developing a philosophical–analytical formulation of responsibility in medicine, aiming for an in-depth understanding and critique of moral claims on a metaethical level without presuming one particular normative approach. Carmel Shalev focuses on the social responsibility of individuals in the context of assisted reproduction technologies, reminding us how this seemingly liberating project of rights should also involve empathetic self-reflection regarding the role of third-party women who participate in this transaction. Carlo Petrini and Michele Farisco highlight the complex legal definitions of professional–clinical responsibility, and the limits of legal frameworks as professional–ethical questions are going beyond them. Maria Hedlund shows us the political aspects of responsibility in the context of epigenetics. For her, new insights into the environmental impact on our genetic constitution are good reasons to change the course from blaming citizens to social activities of protection. Finally, Signe Mezinska, Ilze Mileiko, and Aivita Putnina bring together several perspectives of responsibility in their anthro-ethical study of gamete donation in Latvia. S. Schicktanz (&) Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, University Medical Center Goettingen, Humboldtallee 36, Goettingen, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]