Βioethical issues

  1. Lemma
  2. Προβλήματα Βιοηθικῆς
  3. Greek, Modern (1453-)
  4. Delli, Eudoxie
  5. Biology - Ethics - Scientific theories and disciplines > Medicine - Modes of interaction - Scientific theories and disciplines
  6. 25-1-2017
  7. Zannis, Tasos [Author]. Βioethical issues
  8. Σύναξη [Synaxi]
  9. Fletcher, Joseph - Ramsey, Paul - Rawls, John - Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre - embryonic - genetics - Hippocrates
    1. <p>Ζαννής, Τ. [Ζannis, T.] (1990). Προβλήματα Βιοηθικῆς. <em>Σύναξη</em>, <em>34</em>, 111-117.</p>

    1. Tassos Zannis treats the subject of modern bioethical problems. After a short history of the bioethical inquiry in West, he maps its key issues and the relevant mainstream schools of thought. Finally, he expresses his doubts about the recent theoretical attempt to reduce ethics to the biological data and the evolution of human brain.

      He begins with an introductory definition of bioethics related to the field of medicine. After a short reference to Hippocrates and its oath, he draws his attention to the contemporary issues, which emerge with the great strides of biological and medicinal sciences and technologies. These strides are linked to a transformation of the role of medicine that takes, according to the author, the arrogant mask of an omnipotent magician.

      Τhen, he exposes the main issues of bioethics grouping them in six relevant categories (procreation – genetics – death - medicinal research on human being – control of human behaviour - politics of medicine/pharmacology/biological weapons). He continues with a brief overview of the relevant mainstream schools of thought in West.

      As he notes, the bioethical responses have been always related to specified conceptions on world and man, as well as to conceptions about the human attitude towards Nature. For many centuries these conceptions drawn their validity from the dominant religious traditions and were almost indisputable. The Christian views were identified in the West with the official positions of the Catholic Church expressed in the relevant papal encyclicals. Within Modernity the supremacy of religion as source of ethics was contested. Ethical preoccupations are related to different philosophical systems of thought. In this framework, the author presents three main bioethical schools of thought, which dominate bioethical inquiry: a) the theory of the proportional good of Joseph Fletcher (Christian ethicist and professor of medical ethics in Virginia), b) the prohibitionist theory of Paul Ramsey (Christian theologian and ethicist), which underlines the sacred character of human life and is influenced by the Kantian philosophy on human dignity, 3) the theory of justice of John Rawls (political philosopher in Harvard), aiming to unify the Kantian deontological conception with Fletcher’s theory.

      The author argues that despite the pluralism of bioethical theories, the Western thought did not achieve to formulate a comprehensive and global approach of human nature. For this reason, modern thought searched for a more solid basis in relating ethics to the data of the progressive evolution of human brain, given that the latter is considered as the dominant factor in the development of human civilization. In this perspective, ethics seems to be identified with the progressive evolution of brain.

      In the last part of his article, the author rejects this idea and analyzes its philosophical implications. On the one side, he underlines the gnoseological difference between ethics and science. The latter has a changing character and is subjected to verification, while the former has to be timeless and truthful. Science describes what something is, while ethics indicates what is needful or right. The transition from the fact to the rightness must be mediated by a value judgement, which is independent from the fact. In this sense, science can say a lot about ethics but is not ethics. On the side, he notes that science risks being a substitute of faith and religion.

       According to the author, the biological basis of ethics could be possible only if biology was enlarged in order to encompass aspects of human life, which are unrecognisable to other living beings. Biochemistry and biology cannot explain the entire human life because man is not a simple living organism. Man indicates a ‘bound’ in the course of evolution exceeding the limits of natural prescriptions and biological determinism through consciousness, spirituality and freedom. Moreover, the progressive development of humankind – based on the voluntary and selective transmission of cultural information, mainly through language – advances the evolution of the entire humankind and maybe of the whole biosphere. The author concludes by signalizing that the overlook of the aforementioned humankind’s specificity by modern bioethical inquiry, risks leading to destabilizing regressions and to incompatibility to human nature solutions.