Applying morality to advances in biomedicine

can and should this be done?

Arthur Caplan

pp. 155-168

in: William B. Bondeson, Tristram Engelhardt, Stuart Spicker, Joseph M. White Jr (eds), New knowledge in the biomedical sciences, Berlin, Springer, 1982

Abstract

Recent disputes concerning the development and application of new knowledge and new therapies in the biomedical sciences have created a new industry of sorts — bioethics. This is not to say that advances in medical science prior to the 1960's and 1970's moved ahead with little attention to moral concerns. Nor is it to say that biomedical research and therapy prior to the 1960's was conducted in an immoral or amoral manner. Rather, as new advances in biomedicine enabled physicians to intervene with greater power in the lives of their patients, many in the health professions and the humanities found themselves increasingly concerned about the normative issues raised by the administration of new technologies to preserve or maintain the lives of the very young, the very old and the very ill.