Bioethics Here and in Poor Countries: A Comment

Abstract

Conclusion: Because bioethics is not yet an established discipline, it still has the opportunity to widen its scope. However, bioethics must definitely be interdisciplinary to avoid the rigidity and one-sidedness of single disciplines. Given the impact of underdevelopment and poverty on an interdependent world, bioethics should be regarded as an academic discipline that deals with those problems as well. Where millions of children die due to the lack of basic healthcare or where millions of orphans are denied the right for parental care and love, the microscopic philosophical debates on reproductive issues such as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and surrogate motherhood seem -- in a global context -- rather out of proportion. Besides the ethics of nature, the ethics of life, and the ethics of solidarity, we must consider the time factor as an ethical value as well....