Bioethical "Choices"

The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity is holding its 14th annual bioethics conference at Trinity International University this week. In his talk last night, Nigel M. de S. Cameron noted that we used to talk about "medical ethics" and that this had to do with discerning "rights from wrongs" in the practice of medicine. Now we use a much more "plastic" phrase, "bioethics," which is a post-modern "discipline" and some even talk of the bioethicist "community," of which one might be a member by saying, "I am a bioethicist." We've gone from medical ethics and discerning rights and wrongs to "bioethical" discussions of "how we are to make our choices." Yes, I see the point. Like so much else in society, it's all about the process and choice, not what's right and wrong.

Anthony Esolen knows about this, and wrote about his family's experience of medical choices in this month's Touchstone, "Esther's Guarded Condition."

The conference continues today until 5 pm, then resumes tomorrow for another full day. Drop in if you're in the neighborhood. We have a table there for Touchstone and Salvo.

Comments

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

>>> Like so much else in society, it's all about the process and choice, not what's right and wrong. <<<

Fiendishly clever!

Can't help but have a perverse respect and fear of the enemy below.

[Katherine Philips]

"Bioethics" is a fair term, I believe: it encompasses a wider range of issues and situations than "medical ethics" does. It doesn't hurt to use the common parlance, in this case. Leon Kass is an example of someone who regularly uses the common parlance and even jargon related to these issues, but he still firmly states that these are decisions between right and wrong and argues in moral terms (even though there's room for Christians to disagree with some of his conclusions).

[Jim Kushiner]

I think the "ethics" part of "bioethics" is what we have to hold on to.