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Essay on bioethics
Bioethics personal reflection
Essays about ethics in healthcare
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The term bioethics refers to the moral principles used when one is making a decision while in the healthcare field. It is the moral compass that humans use to decide what is the right thing to do versus the wrong thing to do when faced with an ethical dilemma. These decisions may be based on principles, reasoning, personal beliefs, emotions, natural science, or other influential factors. Classical moral philosophy uses the principles, opinions, or thoughts one has to determine how they should live their life. It focuses more on the self-governing or virtue of a persons morals. Emotions can also impact ethical decisions; however, these are often critiqued as an irrational basis. In Aristotle’s view of ethics, emotions are important because they are what facilitate our thinking and making decisions. They lead to practical knowledge. People can use what emotion they are feeling and link it to a thought and use that thought in determining what to do in a moral dilemma (Molewijk, Kleinlugtenbelt, & Widdershoven, 2011). Modern moral philosophy has principles influenced by modern ...
Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, depicts the violation of medical ethics from the patient and researcher perspectives specifically when race, poverty, and lack of medical education are factors. The novel takes place in the southern United States in 1951. Henrietta Lacks is born in a poor rural town, Clover, but eventually moves to urban Turner Station. She was diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins hospital where cells was unknowingly taken from her and used for scientific research. Rebecca Skloot describes this when she writes, “But first—though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting sample or asked she wanted to be a donor—Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta's cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish” (33). The simple act of taking cells, which the physicians did not even think twice about, caused decades
Nathaniel Wu, a talented and dedicated microbiologist, should be hired for the Intercontinental Pharmaceutical Company (ICP) under certain conditions. Wu, who was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, was seen as the ideal candidate for the employment position the IPC was offering until this inconvenience was unveiled. To offer Wu employment unconditionally is extremely risky for the medical costs and equipment damages he can bring to the company can be devastating; to deny Wu employment entirely is a violation of bioethics and discrimination, for he was already offered the job position conditionally before taking medical tests. By offering Wu employment under certain conditions, Wu can be part of the IPC and have him employment terminated as soon as his condition begins interfering with his work quality.
Traditional ethical theories see emotion as a way to arrive to a means of reason and rationalistic moralities. Emotions are a very important component of the ethics of care and embrace rather than deny them during the calculations of morality. Prevalent ethical theories distinguish public life from private life within the household when no such distinction should be made.
The word abortion brings out a variety of attitudes & perceptions amongst people. The topic is surrounded by emotion and empathy, which often creates a divide, those who view abortion as permissible and those who do not. In “Bioethics Before Birth," Tooley and Marquis provide their arguments on abortion. Their arguments share some similarities but their viewpoints and delivery set them apart. I will evaluate and compare the differences and similarities in their arguments.
"Bioethics" has been used in the last 21 years to describe the investigation and study of ways in which advance in medicine and science impact upon our health, lives, society and environment. Bioethics is concerned with questions about basic human values and the rightness or wrongness of certain developments in life technology and medicine. These days when technology advancement allowed scientist to conduct test which may have “uncertain” consequences like Cloning. It’s necessary that people should know the pros and cons of such scientific procedures before they support its continued use. (9)
While the moral backing for public health in its current state may be sound, what many researchers fail to understand is that the many moral failings of its predecessors that color the legacy of public health internationally and at home. As discussed in the chapter “Colonial Medicine and its Legacies” within the textbook Reimagining Global Health arranged by Paul Farmer, before the conception of global health there was international health which sought to distribute health as a good horizontally across international, political lines. Under the framework of international health, public health workers became agents of a cold war enmeshed in the fiscal, geopolitical, and territorial struggles between two hegemons rather than the holistic value of community health. While international health as a framework has largely been abandoned, much of its rhetoric can be found within our current framework of public health such as the enumeration of certain parts of the world as "1st world", "2nd world",
Emotion is a part of what makes us human, so much so that often if someone lacks emotion they are considered non-human; like Frankenstein. In some cases this human characteristic on its own isn’t thought to mix well with moral judgement. With many views supporting this statement, is there still room in the moral code for both reason and emotion? An analysis of the role that the specific emotion empathy has in moral judgment helps explain this matter in Aristotle and Kant’s view; I prefer Aristotle’s prospective.
Bioethics was originated many centuries ago. Ethical theories in medicine are the basis of bioethics. There are many different ethical approaches which causes much dispute. The imperical question is, what makes an act right and which approach to follow. The Greeks addressed the virtue of ethics. They looked into the good of the person and the situation. Ethos in Greek means, disposition and trait. So consequently they looked at eh person’s skills, habits, and traits. Compassion and the meaning of suffering are some other issues in Bioethics that can be argued. Choosing an act because it is right and also looking at the consequences are some other concerns. Other things to consider are what the patient and their families want. Their religious beliefs are also a major concern. How far should someone go to help a dying suffering patient who wants to take their life? Is it right to intercept and help a patient to die? Medical technology is ever advancing. People are being kept alive for years on support. This is a major topic of debate in Bioethics. Deciding if it’s right or wrong to keep them alive even if they are brain dead is a major concern. What constitutes a person a person when they have Alzheimer’s or brain damage? Are they a person? These are some of the major topics discussed in Bioethics.
The different theories on emotions arose in the 3rd century B.C. at the time of Ancient Greece and Ancient China. While the western philosophical studies labeled emotions in many different ways. According to Aristotle to have virtue it is necessary to have emotions, as its important ingredient. As a result of different attempts made emotions were given importance and studies were performed in an analytical way in the 19th century (Suchy, Yana 2011) (Aristotle).
The controversy with community water fluoridation arises from moral, ethical, political and safety concerns with respect to water fluoridation. As far back as 1930, there was a relationship inversely between the levels of fluoride in drinking water and existence of dental caries. Any practice like fluoridation, which uses the public water supply to deliver the medicine violated the medical ethics. The ethical issues associated with the water fluoridation include- balancing risks and benefits, presence of any other interventions with the same outcome, the role of consent. Fluoridation violates the principle of informed consent. On the other hand, in public health practice the principle of beneficence has more weight than the principle of autonomy.
In this diverse society we are confronted everyday with so many ethical choices in provision of healthcare for individuals. It becomes very difficult to find a guideline that would include a border perspective which might include individual’s beliefs and preference across the world. Due to these controversies, the four principles in biomedical ethic which includes autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice help us understand and explain which medical practices are ethical and acceptable. These principles are not only used to protect the rights of a patient but also the physician from being violated.
Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the moral principles and values that govern our behavior as human beings. It is important in the human experience that we are able to grasp the idea of our own ethical code in order to become the most sensible human beings. But in that process, can ethics be taught to us? Or later in a person’s life, can he or she teach ethics the way they learned it? It is a unique and challenging concept because it is difficult to attempt to answer that question objectively because everybody has his or her own sense of morality. And at the same time, another person could have a completely different set of morals. Depending on the state of the person’s life and how they have morally developed vary from one human
The case of Dr. Lowell and Mrs. Jackson revolves around a conflict between the doctor, who advocates the implementation of a particular treatment and the patient who disagrees with the doctor and wishes to do things her own way. The doctor feels that the suggested course of action is disastrous and threatens to have the patient declared mentally incompetent. The question now is whether or not the doctor is morally justified in taking action against the patient in order to implement the course of treatment she feels would be most effective. Is this an infringement on the autonomy of the patient or is the doctor morally obliged to do everything that he/she can possible do in order to restore the patient’s health even if that includes to go so far as to take this decision out of the hands of the patient?
Ethical theories are a way of finding solutions to ethical dilemmas using moral reasoning or moral character. The overall classification of ethical theories involves finding a resolution to ethical problems that are not necessarily answered by laws or principles already in place but that achieve justice and allow for individual rights. There are many different ethical theories and each takes a different approach as to the process in which they find a resolution. Ethical actions are those that increase prosperity, but ethics in business is not only focused on actions, it can also involve consequences of actions and a person’s own moral character.
In order to understand ethical responsibility, it is necessary to understand the meaning of the word “ethics”. Ethics is the study of moral values, or individual and societal convictions that allow a person to distinguish right from wrong (Macrina, 2005). In a more objective sense, ethics can also be described as the analysis of reasoning—the “logic” behind decision-making. Ethical values are the framework of any civilized society, often resulting in common behavioral codes that are accepted across a particular group or culture (Macrina, 2005). In fact, the study of ethics is not restricted to political or social behavior. Applied ethics, or ethics in the workplace, refer to the compliance with principles found in specific fields or occupations. Scientific professions, like other professions, observe certain ethical standards (Macrina, 2005).