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A Tale of Two Continents: A Life of Bioethics Amid American and European Perspective

Bioethicists “come” from various disciplines, each with their own distinctive set of experiences, methods, and assumptions. Bioethics is both an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field as it aims to connect philosophy, sociology, behavioral science and history with the medical law, medicine, nursing and health policy in various complicated and practical situations of medical care. Insights from diff erent disciplines are brought forward in the complex interaction of human life, science, and technology. Bioethicists, in addition to conducting research on ethical, social, and legal issues arising in biomedicine and biomedical research, also teach courses and give seminars, help draft hospital institutional policies, run ethics committees, and provide consultation and advice on ethical issues through both theoretical and practical endeavors. A particular way of moral reasoning and decision-making integrates empirical data from medicine and creates another applied discipline. The most common or frequent issues of recent bioethical debates, capturing the attention of leading bioethical, clinical, health policy, or social science journals, usually address the moral permissibility of specific actions and practices related to the beginning and end of human life, medical procedures, technologies and treatments, biomedical research, the status of patients and vulnerable social groups in the risk of communicable disease and their access to health care. Applied bioethics elaborates arguments from a critical examination of the medical practice, considerations in discussions and debates about the organization and fi nancing of health care, and off ers ethical guidance in medicine and health care to medical professionals, institutional leaders, and patients. Th ere are very few reasons to question, challenge or dispute the contribution and importance of applied bioethics and its contribution to the improvement of relations between physicians, nurses, and patients, the status of patients in the process of health care delivery, and treatment of patients with disabilities and vulnerable groups. However, its high-level visibility and growing presence in the health care system does not necessarily imply theoretical and methodological consistency. Namely, it does not deal with the question of whether morality exists, but rather with the reasoned construction of fundamental principles of morality. This special issue on bioethics is not an attempt to follow the common understanding of bioethics that supports ethical issues related to new technologies and does not vanquish disciplinary boundaries of ethics as applied to diff erent fi elds of research such as social, feminist, information, business, research, political ethics, and ethics of law. While such an approach facilitates new and valuable perspectives, it also causes problems for a more integrated approach to bioethics. Rather, the objective here is to address diff erent bioethical problems in the context of an emerging global society organizing the interdisciplinary debate between clinical medicine and public health, law, philosophy, sociology and political sciences, psychology, psychiatry and behavioral sciences and to encourage international debates at the intersection of health, biotechnology, and medicine. The professional and disciplinary background of the contributing authors covers all the above mentioned health-related fi elds of bioethics. Th e cultural, geographical and academic background and experience of the participants and the authors alike was a unique opportunity to have an open discussion on the various aspects and controversies of bioethics from both an American and European bioethical perspective. Th e concepts of global bioethics and integrative bioethics were used as theoretical platforms to consider the diff erences in the origins, concepts, academic and disciplinary history and methodology of contemporary bioethics from different disciplinary positions, in the line with the interdisciplinary character of our journal. Three major issues were at the forefront in the discussion about conceptual question-related history and the future of bioethics. Th e fi rst question was about the history and inception of bioethics both from an American and European perspective. Th e second was the question of the meaning, concept, content, and possibility of a “global bioethics” by employing both cultural and “continental” perspectives. The third area of discussion was related to recent controversial bioethical issues on both sides of the Atlantic such as organ transplantation, vaccination, and human enhancement. Th e major conceptual questions in the discussion focused on: What is bioethics? What is global bioethics? When was the inception of bioethics and who is/are its founding fathers? Are there any “Essential” or fundamental principles that bioethics, and in particular global/international bioethics, would rest on? How to integrate different levels, methods and various parts of bioethics in clinical and public health practice around the globe on issues such as infectious disease surveillance, control and prevention, vaccination of a population, organ transplantation, human physical and moral enhancement, information technologies and social ecology? A Tale of Two Continents: A Life of Bioethics Amid American and European Perspective. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318851551_A_Tale_ of_Two_Continents_A_Life_of_Bioethics_Amid_American_and_ European_Perspective [accessed Aug 31, 2017].

Bioethics, Europe, America, Global

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