There is a long tradition of bioethical reasoning within the Roman Catholic faith, a tradition expressed in scripture, the writings of the Doctors of the Church, papal encyclical documents and reflections by contemporary Catholic theologians. Catholic bioethics is concerned with a broad range of issues, including social justice and the right to health care, the duty to preserve life and the lim...

I write this criticism of H. Tristram Engelhardt's The Foundations of Bioethics' not fiom the perspective of a philosopher, but fiom that of a physician with a long-time interest in health policy issues as they relate to bioethics. I hold Engelhardt in high regard: among philosophers currently active in bioethics, he is one of the few who are deeply committed to freedom as the primary requireme...

Bioethics, the investigation of ethical issues in medicine, biology, and health sciences, is in vogue in the developed world. Television news often shows feature stories on debates over the proper uses of such new developments as embryonic stem cells or gene therapy, and newspapers elicit public comments on their Internet sites. Societal responses to these technological advances are mediated th...

The Interdisciplinary and Empirical Ethics Network was established in 2012 with funding from the Wellcome Trust in order to facilitate critical and constructive discussion around the nature of the disciplinary diversity within bioethics and to consider the ongoing development of bioethics as an evolving field of interdisciplinary study. In April 2013, the Interdisciplinary and Empirical Ethics ...

In this paper I intend to put forward some criticism of the purely procedural model of bioethics, which, in fact, leads to delegating to biopolitics and biolaw the finding of a purely pragmatic solution to the issues for which bioethics was "invented" over forty years ago. This delegating takes place after the transition from the thesis, dear to modernity, whereby in ethics reasoning should avo...

Bioethics is the use of dialog for formulating and solving moral dilemmas posed by the progress of science and technology. Concerns about the survival of life on Earth and of the relations between medicine and the humanities were the origins of bioethical thinking. From a conceptual point of view it constitutes a social process governed by emotions, a technical procedure aimed at correct decisi...

Bioethics in Mexico has a history that reveals the vision and ethical commitment of iconic characters in the fields of health sciences and humanities, leading to the creation of the National Bioethics Commission responsible for promoting a bioethics culture in Mexico. Its development and consolidation from the higher perspective of humanism had the aim to preserve health, life and its environme...

This comment contains the reflections of a first-time participant in the 13th International Association of Bioethics Congress (IAB 2016), held from June 14 to 17, 2016, in Edinburgh. At the outset, I would like to make a couple of clarifications. First, the opinions expressed here are my personal reflections and second, I am a physician and public health practitioner by profession and my intere...

In this review of Leon Kass’s Life, liberty and the defense of dignity and Deryck Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword’s Human dignity in bioethics and biolaw. I consider the prospects for a theory of dignity as a basis for bioethics research. I argue that dignity theories are worth exploring in more detail, but that research needs to consider both ‘‘antitheory’’ accounts of the language of bioethics...

These bibliographies have been prepared by information specialists at The National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature, Kennedy Institute of Ethics (http://bioethics.georgetown.edu). The documents are “Works-in-Progress.” Please return to this website to view updates to these lists as new literature is identified by the High School Bioethics Project staff and/or added to the library colle...