BIOETHICS
structure, function, growth, origin, distribution
(DEFINITION)
Ethics
 A practical and normative science
 based on reason which studies human acts and
provide norms for their goodness and badness.
Bioethics
 Moral philosophy
 it deals with morality, moral rectitude or the
rightness and wrongness of human act.
Bioethics as Practical Science
 As a practical science, it deals with a systematized
body of knowledge that can be used, practiced and
applied to human action.
Bioethics as Normative Science
 It establishes norms or standards for the direction
and regulation of human actions
TYPES OF ETHICS
 General Ethics or Normative Ethics
o Diverse ethical formulations of general and
universal concepts and principles which serve as
the foundation of morality
o Raises the problem of moral norm and attempts
to formulate and defend a system of
fundamental ethical perceptions that settle
which acts are good or evil
o Does not only apply general moral concepts and
principles but also specifies the particular
situations in life which they are valid and
legitimate
o Applied in an attempt to resolve specific moral
problems
 Applied Ethics
o Professional Ethics – Deals with certain moral
precepts or rules by which persons behave and
act in exercise of their calling or profession (e.g.
nursing ethics, teacher’s code of ethics for
educators)
o Biology – A natural science concerned with the
study of life and living organisms including their
and taxonomy
o Bioethics – Ethics of life. A branch of applied
ethics which investigates practices and
developments in the life sciences and or
biomedical fields. As an applied ethics, its
primary and major predicaments are those
concerning life, health and death that have
resulted from modern biological technology
particularly the way they have affected human
values.
EVOLUTIONARY PHASES OF BIOETHICAL
STUDIES
 Medical Ethics
o Oldest phase of bioethical exploration
o A formulation of ethical norms for the conduct
of health care professionals in the treatment of
patients.
o Codes of ethics were written by and for
physicians as early as the 3rd century BC
 Hippocratic Oath
o Oldest known formulations of medical ethics,
named after Hippocrates,
o To be kept from harm and injustice (physician
should not prescribe fatal dugs nor should
suggest fatal drugs to be taken;
o Rules out any form of abortifacient and sexual
relations between doctors and patients;
o Moral significance of confidentiality, the
medical secrecy)
 Research Ethics
o Refers to the use of humans as experimental
specimens e.g. prisoners, poor patients,
children and fetuses.
o Third Reich-dictatorial regime of Adolf Hitler;
superman concept as the culmination of the
philosophy will to power; experiment using
human without consent was done
 Nuremburg Code
o Attempted to humanize the cruel and barbaric
nature of experiments using human species in
German concentration camps. It takes into
account the experimental subjects’ consent,
now known as informed consent, informed
decision or informed choice

 Public Policy
o Accentuates the participatory aspect of
decision making in a democratic set up with
regard to the formulation of public policies for
the benefit of all.
o Refers to the people’s efforts or involvement in
formulating public guidelines for both clinical
cases and biomedical research
Personhood
 Man is man by his intellect and by his rational will.
 man is responsible for his actions.
 He alone is aware of what he is doing and is free to
act or not to act.
 When he does not know what he is doing or when he
is no longer free to act, the responsibility for his
actions is no longer blamed to him.
 Acts of irrational animals and insane persons are
devoid of moral significance. They are amoral beings
performing non-moral acts
Human Acts
 Are done with knowledge and full consent of the
will.
 One knows what one is doing and does it freely and
willingly.
Acts of Man
 Which are performed in the absence of either or
both knowledge and full consent of the will.
 Actions committed by unconscious and insane
persons, by infants or by those who are physically
forced to do something.
Acts of Men
 Actions which merely happen in the body or through
the body without the awareness of the mind or the
control of the will.
3 Elements of Human Act
 Knowledge - Awareness or consciousness of the
conditions and meaning of our actions. An act
performed during sleep or when a person is insane is
not a human act.
 Freedom - Power to choose between 2 or more
courses of action without being forced to take one or
the other by anything except your own will.
 Voluntariness - Occurs when man knows the
purpose of his action. It is a will-act.
Ignorance - absence of knowledge in an individual who
is supposed to know it
o Vincible – can be overcome by exerting some
effort
o Invincible – can hardly be removed even if one
were to exert extra effort to overcome it
Conscience
 The moral faculty of a man which tells him
subjectively what is good and evil
 Sensitivity with regard to choosing our actions;
 The consciousness of human value is the basis of
judgment we make concerning morality of our
actions.
 If our evaluation of the worth of a person is high, we
shall be sensitive to how close our action is to the
deal;
 If it is low, then we shall be less sensitive in
achieving the ideal.
 The last arbiter of one’s moral decision
School of
Thoughts
Ethical Relativism
 Moral relativism,
 Claims that there are no universal or absolute moral
principles.
 Standards of right or wrong are always relative to a
particular culture or society.
Situation Ethics
 By Joseph Fletcher, an American Protestant Medical
Doctor
 3 Approaches to Morality (Fletcher)
1. Legalistic/Normative
 o Prescribes certain general moral prescriptions,
laws or norms by which to judge, determine and
settle the rightness and wrongness of human
judgment or decision
o Fletcher finds this too restrictive
o produces practical results
2. Antinomian
o Frees the Christian from the obligations of the
moral law
o There are no absolute precepts or moral
principles by which to be guided in making
decision
o Fletcher finds it too liberal and unconventional
which may lead to anarchy and chaos
3. Situationism
o The moral norm depends upon a given situation
o Whatever the situation may be, one must
always act in the name of Christian love
o Situation refers to human condition or any state
of moral affairs and issues that demand a moral
judgment or action.
o Fletcher’s preferred approach
3 TYPES OF LOVE (FETCHER)
1. Eros - sexual love
2. Philia – affection that binds a parent to a child, a
brother to a sister, etc.
3. Agapeic – one’s care, concern and kindness to
others. Characterized by charity, respect and
responsibility towards the others; Christian love
Situationism
 Combine love and justice in treating ill patients.
 Agapeic love serves to check selfish
 Motive as well as uncaring health personnel.
 It makes moral decisions flexible and
 Adaptable to varying situations. Circumstances alter
cases.
 Argument
 Medical misuse and abuse may be surreptitiously
committed
Pragmatism
 Charles Peirce and William James Peirce
o Philosopher, physicist, mathematician and the
founder and inventor of the term pragmatism
 More of a theory of knowledge, truth and meaning
than of morality
 Holds that the true and valid form of knowledge is
one which is practical, workable, beneficial and
useful
 True and Valid Form of Knowledge (Pierce)
1. Practical – one that we can practice and
2. Workable – one that we can put to work; it can
be worked out and it works
3. Beneficial – it benefits people
 The truth happens to ideas and is not a quality or
property of ideas.
 Truth is made by true events or happening
 Argument
 Materialistic - its claim that the truth is the cash
value of an idea
 Too individualistic
Utilitarianism
 2 English philosophers, Jeremy Bentham and John
Stuart Mill
 It claims that there is one and only one moral
principle – the principle of utility
 States that the rightness and wrongness of actions is
determined by the goodness and badness of their
consequences
 The utility of an action is determined by the extent
to which it promotes happiness rather than its
reverse.
 Consequences, effects, results and outcomes are
most important
 Alternative form of the utilitarian’s utility principle as
to get rid of individualism and subjectivism: Principle
of the Greatest Happiness
 Principle of the Greatest Happiness
o An action is good (right) in so far as it produces
the greatest happiness for the greatest number
of people;
o An action is bad (wrong) in so far as it produces
more harm than benefit for the greatest
number of individuals
 Act utilitarianism – situationalistic;
 Rule utilitarianism – absolutistic
 Once a rule or policy is formulated, it must be
followed given the same set of circumstances
 Provides a system for formulating, testing and
evaluating hospital policies and regulations which
give rise to the enactment of laws, directives,
guidelines and codes of conduct
 Service Oriented

 The quality of being helpful, useful and generous to

Argument
 It justifies the imposition of discomfort or suffering
on a few for the sake of the many
 It is somewhat impractical to attempt to determine
all the possible legitimate results that must be taken
into account before a moral decision can be
adjudged as right or wrong.
 It ignores the motives from which some moral
decisions are made.
THE QUALITIES AND
CHARACTERISTICS OF
EFFECTIVE HEALTH
others
 Value-added attitude of dedication to one’s work not
mindful of remuneration paid, time spent, or
schedule given
Simplicity
 The quality of being sincere, true or straightforward
 Absence of show or pretension
 To live with integrity, to be simple
 Advocate of sustainable development
Risk Taking Personality
 The quality of being courageous, strong, open and
vulnerable
Patience
 The quality of being willing to put up waiting, pain or
anything that annoys, trouble or hurts

CARE PROVIDERS

Quality

 A dynamic state associated with people, services,

processes and environment that meets or exceeds
expectations
 Applies to any distinctive feature or characteristic of
an individual
 Professional’s proficiencies that conform to clients or
patients expectation
 Desirable personal attributes or traits that health
care providers such as nurses, may possess

Personal Qualities/Charcteristics
Self Respect

 Proper regard for the dignity of one’s character or

position
 Appreciation or recognition of its obligation of
worthy conduct

Self-Transcendence

 The quality of going beyond one’s own self

 Self-giving
 Selfless love
 The death of self