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The Uses and Abuses of Moral Theory in Bioethics

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Abstract

Moral theory is an important guide to bioethical decision-making, but it can confuse and mislead those who offer ethical advice to clinicians and researchers, delaying decisions that must be made in a timely fashion. In this paper I examine the ways moral theory can lead bioethicists astray. Absent a sensitivity to the empirical realities of ethical problems, moral theory 1) contributes to the disappearance of the persons caught in an ethical quandary, 2) focuses on the puzzle-solving rather than examining the conditions that generate moral problems, and 3) universalizes ethical dilemmas, overlooking local processes for resolving moral questions. Taken together, empirically informed moral theory and theoretically informed empirical research can help bioethicists transcend the is/ought problem in ethical work.

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Notes

  1. This term gives a nod to the legal realist movement of the early 20th century (Schlegel 1995).

  2. This research is more fully explained in De Vries and Rott 2011, from which this section is taken.

  3. http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.htm

  4. Current version available at: http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm

  5. See http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/I54ME.html for a brief description of the indigenization movement in mission work from a Mennonite point of view.

  6. Solomon (2006) outlines three different forms of the export problem; temporal, local, and personal.

  7. http://www.fic.nih.gov/programs/training_grants/bioethics/overview.htm

  8. http://med.kuleuven.be/education/Bioethics/index.html

  9. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Medical-humanities/Grants/Biomedical-ethics/index.htm

  10. Better to employ an approach that I call “distributive morality” where Western ethical ideas and ethical guidelines and regulations are used not in a way that imposes them on a local culture, but are used to open a conversation about moral standards and to stimulate a cooperative search for the moral traditions in a local setting that would undergird ethical regulations in that setting. In this way the regulations governing research and governing clinical transactions would be drawn from the local culture and reflect local moral conditions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine, Department of Medical Education/Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Michigan Medical School, 300 North Ingalls Street, Rm. 7C27, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109–5429, USA

    Raymond De Vries

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, 300 North Ingalls Street, Rm. 7C27, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109–5429, USA

    Raymond De Vries

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Correspondence to Raymond De Vries.

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De Vries, R. The Uses and Abuses of Moral Theory in Bioethics. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 14, 419–430 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-011-9290-y

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