Ethics and Cardiology

Characteristics of bioethical contexts

The emergence of bioethics involved four central factors. The first was increased capability – being capable of, say, keeping a dying patient alive, discovering fetal characteristics before birth or transplanting body organs – forced the question: ought this be done? This had been irrelevant to practice when there was no capability. The second was increased knowledge of the unforeseen consequences of actions, which compelled unanticipated moral decisions. The third was, as a result of increased capability and knowledge, an increase in benefits,…