HEALTH

Professor:
CARE
Dr. Dolores
ETHICS
J. Palacio
(BIOETHICS)
I. Introduction to Bioethics
 a. Importance of bioethics
 b. Definition of terms
 i. Ethics
 ii. Biology
 iii. Bioethics
 iv. Health Ethics
 v. Professional Ethics
 c. History of Ethics
 What is Bioethics?
The four fields to consider are the following:

 Regulation of advances in genetics. This includes everything that is linked to birth,

including cloning.
 Regulation of those advances that put the environment and planet Earth at risk. In
this case, you must have control of all those practices that endanger natural
habitats, air or water, as well as limit everything that leads to global warming.
 Regulation of those advances and knowledge that have to do with procreation. This
includes abortion, contraception, assisted fertilization, and birth regulations.
 Regulation in health centers. This has to do with practices such as euthanasia,
palliative and even the care given to people who are in intensive care.
What is Bioethics?
 The concept of bioethics refers to the ethics of life or biology. Of Greek origin,
the term bios means “life” while ethos it means “ethics.”

 Biochemist and oncologist Van Rensselaer Potter was one of the first, in the
1970s, to use the word bioethics and tried to define it as an intellectual
discipline that Its object of study is the “problem of the survival of humanity”.
At the same time, he considered that it could be used as a “bridge” between
life sciences -in all its scopes- and classical ethics.
Importance of Bioethics

Bioethics was
developed&
conceptualized in
countries that had to
faced the complex
ethical challenges
that resulted from
bioscientific
developments. Important for every
member of the
health profession to
Ex: Filipinos conflict get acquainted w/
w. Christian
traditions. the ethical
principles involved
in biomedical
procedures.
 Imperative that the
moral issues involved in
present & future
Bioethics seeks to Importance of Bioethics
developments be keep members of
understood & moral the health
stand be taken on the profession aware of enhance
implications of these. the dos & don’t of practitioner their
medical practice. competence by
understanding
that the patient is
a person & a
holistic individual.
Importance of Bioethics
 Bioethics involves medical ethics and studying about equilibrium between
benefits, harm and duties. It does have an influence both on patients and
health professionals.
 Relevance of bioethics varies from birth to end of life.
 Bioethics not only provides a guideline to medical professionals about
clinical decision-making, advancements in medical technologies, but also
playing vital role in policy changes and legislation in recent years.
 Bioethics is a blend of scientific and humanistic constituent and does not
have need of the recognition of certain long-established standards that
are basic to medical ethics.
 Bioethics contributes to the rights and responsibilities of patients as
persons. Its significance replicates in various divisions e.g. medical care,
researches and overall community
Bioethics
 Bioethics is usually applied in very specific cases that, due to their
characteristics, generate debates of all kinds. Some examples of these
cases are the following:
✓ Blood transfusions.
✓ The use of chemical or nuclear weapons.
✓ Termination of pregnancy (abortion).
✓ The use of animals to carry out experiments and tests of new
medicines or vaccines.
✓ Organ donation.
✓ The duration of life or quality of life.
✓ Euthanasia.
Bioethics in philosophy
 Bioethics was influenced by various philosophical currents, ranging from Plato to
Marxism, through Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, pragmatism and utilitarianism.

 Broadly speaking, different theoretical schools that influence bioethics can be

identified:

 Mainly bioethical. It is governed by the four principles mentioned above.

 Universalist bioethics. Consider that, when making a decision in which there is a
dilemma, you should choose the option choose the majority. Part of the idea that
consensus is the best form of authority.
 Personalistic bioethics. He considers that the center of the debate is in each
person and his dignity. It is always governed by the ultimate good of the person.
 Utilitarian bioethics. It is governed by the following principle: “The greatest good
for the greatest number of people.”
Definition of Terms
Ethics Ethics- is a practical
& normative science
based on reason that
studies human &
provide norms for
their goodness or
badness.
Ethics as a Ethics employs the
discipline is the faculty of human
Ethics traces its
roots from the
study of human reasoning in Ethics is a noble and
actions or conduct tackling the
Greek word
from a moral important important science.
ethikos which
perspective as to question of what
means moral duty.
whether they are makes an upright
good or bad. life.
Ethics Ethics Make clear to us why one act is better
than the other;
aims
to:
Enable us to live & have an orderly social
Ethics is way of life;
commonly
associated with
customs, habits, Appraise, criticize & evaluate
practices,
etiquette, moral
intelligently the moral conduct & ethical
values and system ; and;
principles.
Explore & aspire to the true value of life.
 Professional Ethics
Is a branch of moral All socially authorized
science concerned professional power
with the obligations requires public
which a member of a accountability, and
profession owes to the this is especially true
public, to his of medical and
profession, and to his community health
clients. professionals.

The ethical medical

professional expresses
responsibility in
medical codes &
ethical treatises.
Biology
biology, study of living
things and their vital
processes.
• The field deals with all the
physicochemical aspects of life.
The modern tendency toward
cross-disciplinary research and the Modern principles of other
unification of scientific knowledge fields—chemistry, medicine,
and investigation from different and physics, for example—
fields has resulted in significant are integrated with those of
overlap of the field of biology biology in areas such as
biochemistry, biomedicine,
with other scientific disciplines. and biophysics.
Biology

Thus, while it is custom to

separate the study of plants
(botany) from that of animals
(zoology), and the study of the
Biology is subdivided into separate structure of organisms
branches for convenience of study, (morphology) from that of function
though all the subdivisions are (physiology), all living things share
interrelated by basic principles. in common certain biological
phenomena—for example, various
means of reproduction, cell
division, and the transmission of
genetic material.
 Bioethics is a branch of ethics which is
concerned with the research and
application of biology.
Typically, bioethics weighs issues within
medical advancements, health science,
and other medical fields such as
reproduction and genetics.
I. Introduction to Bioethics
Modern
biotechnology
raises ethical
issues that need
to be carefully
considered
because they can
Bioethics is a term used to Bioethics is the study of affect human
describe the application of moral and social responses health,
ethics to biological to issues raised by
sciences, medicine & advances in biology and wellbeing,
related fields. medicine. society and our
environment.
 What is Bioethics

Bioethics is the study

of ethical, social, Bioethics includes medical ethics, which
and legal issues that focuses on issues in health care; research
arise in biomedicine ethics, which focuses issues in the conduct of
and biomedical research; environmental ethics, which focuses
research. on issues pertaining to the relationship
between human activities and the
environment, and public health ethics, which
addresses ethical issues in public health.
What is Bioethics

Bioethicists conduct research on ethical, social, and legal issues

arising in biomedicine and biomedical research; teach courses and
give seminars; help draft institutional policies; serve on ethics
committees, and provide consultation and advice on ethical issues.

Bioethicists work for academic institutions, hospitals and medical

centers, government agencies, private corporations and
foundations. Bioethicists usually have a graduate degree in bioethics
or a related discipline, such as philosophy, law, medicine, nursing,
public health, psychology, political science, biology, or theology.
Health Care Ethics
• Health care ethics is the
field of applied ethics that
is concerned with the vast Of all of the aspects of the human body,
array of moral decision- and of a human life, which are essential
making situations that to one’s well-being, none is more
arise in the practice of important than one’s health.
medicine in addition to the Advancements in medical knowledge and
procedures and the policies in medical technologies bring with them
that are designed to guide new and important moral issues. These
such practice. issues often come about as a result of
advancements in reproductive and genetic
knowledge as well as innovations in
reproductive and genetic technologies.
Other areas of moral concern include the clinical relationship between
the health care professional and the patient; biomedical and behavioral
human subject research; the harvesting and transplantation of human
organs; euthanasia; abortion; and the allocation of health care services.

Essential to the comprehension of moral issues that arise in the context of

the provision of health care is an understanding of the most important
ethical principles and methods of moral decision-making that are
applicable to such moral issues and that serve to guide our moral
decision-making.

To the degree to which moral issues concerning health care can be

clarified, and thereby better understood, the quality of health care, as
both practiced and received, should be qualitatively enhanced
A Brief History of Health Care Ethics

While the term “medical care” designates the intention to identify and to understand
disease states in order to be able to diagnose and treat patients who might suffer
from them, the term “health care” has a broader application to include not only what
is entailed by medical care but also considerations that, while not medical,
nevertheless exercise a decided effect on the health status of people.

Thus, not only are bacteria and viruses (which are in the purview of medicine) of
concern in the practice of health care, so too are cultural, societal, economic,
educational, and legislative factors to the extent to which they have an impact,
positive or negative, on the health status of any of the members of one’s society.
For this reason, health care workers include not only professional clinicians (for
example, physicians, nurses, medical technicians, and many others) but also social
workers, members of the clergy, medical facility volunteers, to name just a few, and,
in an extended sense, even employers, educators, legislators, and others.
History of bioethics
✓ Bioethics has its origins in Egypt and Mesopotamia. It was there that the first regulations related to
medicine were detected. It is to Hippocrates (Greece, 460-370 BC) and who is awarded the Hippocratic
Oath, that is, a mandatory guide that guides doctors in their work.

✓ On the other hand, scholasticism advanced in a moral theology that addresses the questions of natural
laws, as well as the preservation of life. From the seventeenth century, books and texts began to be
recorded that dealt, jointly, with morals and medicine. These ideas, soon after, made a leap into the
secular world, and are considered the origins of Medical Deontology.

✓ Beyond these origins, in which the term “bioethics” as such did not exist, in general, the history of this
discipline It is divided into two main stages: before Potter and after Potter.

✓ The Before Potter stage includes the two items mentioned above: the Hippocratic Oath and Medical
Deontology. The stage called After Potter is located within the period that goes from the Nuremberg Code
to the first heart transplant, carried out by Christian Barnard in 1967.

✓ In a nutshell, the Nuremberg Code is a set of principles that regulate experimentation with human beings
and it was the result of the Nuremberg Trials that were carried out after the end of World War II.
History of Ethics
References:

 https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resour  https://iep.utm.edu/h-c-ethi/
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 Laura cabral, ethics for health
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 https://conceptdaily.com/bioethic
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s-concept-principles-history-uses-
march 2018
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 https://www.britannica.com/science/bio
 History of Ethics - New World
logy
Encyclopedia
 https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/res
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