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- bioethics, branch of applied ethics that studies the philosophical, social, and legal issues arising in medicine and the life sciences. It is chiefly concerned with human life and well-being, though it sometimes also treats ethical questions relating to the nonhuman biological environment.
www.britannica.com/topic/bioethicsBioethics | Definition, Issues, Approaches, & Facts | Britannica
This article considers some of the ethical and legal issues relating to the ownership and use – including for commercial purposes – of biological material and products derived from humans.
- Abstract
- I. Exemplary Cases
- II. Bodies, Prostheses, and Rights
- III. The Inalienability of The Body
- IV. Embodiment and Boundaries of The Body
- V. Legal Perspectives
- VI. Proposal
- VII. Conclusion
For human creatures, having a body and being embodied are necessary conditions of existence. It is therefore not surprising that the body is a central object of human rights protection as well as legal regulation. Various norms pre- and proscribe conduct with bodies, ranging from inflicting physical harm to consent and rules about various medical p...
A few stylized cases may illustrate the boundary problem and serve as reference points in the discussion. Case 1: Colorblind from birth, the artist Neil Harbisson invented a sensory prosthesis, the ‘eyeborg’, that detects colors and transforms them into sound. It consists of an antenna with a camera mounted on the head, firmly implanted in the skul...
Two axioms form the foundation of the following inquiry and will be addressed in turn. (i) Bodies are of extraordinary value and enjoy strong legal protection; (ii) for the law, bodies and things are categorically different. The reasons for the first axiom are self-evident. For humans, the body has a special status; it is the medium through which w...
The second axiom that ground this discussion is the dichotomy between persons and things. As they are mutually exclusive legal categories, entities can only belong to one of them at a given point in time. Although not expressively laid down in human rights law, this dichotomy is a legal principle traceable to Roman law (which distinguished claims ‘...
IV.A. Physical Criteria
Where might the boundaries of the legal body run? One candidate is straightforward—the bodily envelope, the outer side of the skin. While muddy at the subatomic level, the law usually relates to the meso level of everyday human practice. People tend to experience and recognize the skin as the boundary of the body, here touching someone else begins and the need for caution arises. Drawing the legal boundary of the body there allows for clear distinctions between bodies and things. Consequently...
IV.B. Functional Approaches
Perhaps, definitions of the boundary of the body might need to move away from phenotype and toward functional views of bodies as an ensemble of intertwined functions.46 Everything causally contributing to bodily functioning might then become part of it. This creates the minor problem of specifying relevant functions. Some are prototypical, others are more controversial. However, given extensive debates about ordinary functioning in medicine and psychiatry, it seems probable that a set of ordi...
IV.C. Subjective Criteria: Incorporation and Body Schemes
Alternative criteria for boundaries of the body might be found in perspectives of affected persons, especially in their bodily experiences. According to an influential phenomenological idea, bodies are not merely material objects, but lived bodies(Leib), sites of subjective experience, and the peculiar mode of being in the world. Without appreciating this ‘embodied subjectivity’, the law may miss what it means to have—and be—a body; and the body might have subjective boundaries. Contemporary...
V.A. Skepticism About Bodily Integrity
What follows from the absence of fixed boundaries for the law? Uncertainties about the delineation of body and world have motivated remarks and suggestions from legal scholars like the introductory one by Koops. For instance, Gowri Ramachandran develops an argument from her diagnosis that the ‘experience of our bodies is not isolated from the environment’. The body which the law ought to protect ‘is not the human body […] but rather the “posthuman body”, defined as constructed by and situated...
V.B. Integrity of the Lived Body
A more constructive proposal by Jonathan Herring and Jesse Wall deserves mentioning. Drawing on the phenomenological idea of the body as ‘leib’,73 they ground the right to bodily integrity in its function as the basis for subjectivity, or as they put it, as the point of integration between subjectivity and objectivity. This redefines the body: ‘What counts as the body […] is determined by the physiological function that any part of the body performs’. Relevant are contributions to the ‘lived...
V.C. Stakeholder Interests
The foregoing suggestions do not relieve the law from the challenge of drawing boundaries. Without a fixed ontological conception to resort to, it should turn to normative criteria that best accommodate the interests of stakeholders—users and third parties like owners—as well as legal considerations. Let us briefly look at them in turn.75
In light of these considerations, I wish to submit a proposal for the understanding of the legal body. The body is an essential and unavoidable reference point of legal norms. However, neither metaphysical facts nor subjective or objective criteria clearly define the boundaries of the body. Furthermore, neither extra-legal conceptions of the body n...
The following findings emerge from the analysis: Two axioms shape the legal conception of the body; its exalted status and a strict dichotomy between bodies and things. A prosthesis or assistive device can only belong to one category at any point in time. Second, the law as it stands accepts a basic right to transform one’s body as an instance of t...
Nov 1, 2024 · bioethics, branch of applied ethics that studies the philosophical, social, and legal issues arising in medicine and the life sciences. It is chiefly concerned with human life and well-being, though it sometimes also treats ethical questions relating to the nonhuman biological environment.
global ethics and law can be formulated on the basis of factual biological mechanisms - natural laws that have remarkable equivalents in religion and contemporary law. Introduction
Bioethics is a multidisciplinary field that combines elements of philosophy, theology, history, and law with medicine, nursing, health policy, and the biomedical sciences. It addresses the moral, ethical, and societal issues that arise in health care, medical technology, and the biological sciences.
Bioethics led to the development of the legal rules that have become an integral part of the research enterprise. The law institutionalized and made mandatory the analytical framework for the ethical conduct of research developed by experts in the new field of bioethics.
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What is a social science critique of Bioethics?
Oct 2, 2008 · A social science critique of bioethics argues that traditional bioethics idealizes rational thought and ignores social and cultural factors which shape one's thought and choices. As this chapter shows, this is made possible with the guise of the rhetorical language of rights.
