Bioethics is a relatively new term that emerged during the second half of the 20th century to signify moral reflection and reasoning in the realm of the life sciences.
With the unprecedented advances in biomedical technology many hitherto science fiction fantasies have been turned into real and readily available solutions. Examples include: life-sustaining technologies such as kidney dialysis, organ transplantation, and artificial ventilation; assisted reproductive methods such as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and surrogacy arrangements; cosmetic surgeries; and, most recently, genetic testing as well as genome mapping.
As much as these technologies have enhanced human life in immeasurable ways, they have also raised serious ethical questions. Moreover, earlier precedents involving abuses of scientific research in Europe during the Second World War and subsequently in the United States called for clearer and tighter ethical guidelines for the conduct of biomedical research in order to avoid similar mistakes, which have seriously tarnished the image of scientific research and the reputation of the scientific community. Since biomedical research has the potential of causing irreversible damage to human subjects and even to human life on this planet, bioethics was initially envisioned as a science of survival to guard against inadvertent or adverse effects of irresponsible scientific experimentation.1Over the past few decades bioethics has developed as an interdisciplinary field that draws on insights from the cross-section of the life sciences, humanities and social sciences. In terms of disciplinary pedigree, bioethics extends the well-established field of medical ethics which can be traced back to the emergence of medicine as an organized profession. Bioethics is occasionally used as the synonym of medical ethics, although the latter tends to focus more narrowly on healthcare and medical practice.2 In its broadest conceptualization, however, bioethics includes also, in addition to medical ethics, ethical reflection on the application of biomedical technology as well as the impact of modern technology and lifestyles on the natural environment.
Moreover, bioethics, as a type of applied ethics, builds on the classical field of moral philosophy from the Greek tradition into the modern period.Bioethical deliberations often involve the interface of religion, law, and ethics and that is why they commonly entail legal, theological, and moral dimensions. Even when a procedure is considered legitimate from the purely legal perspective, it may remain questionable from the theological or ethical perspective. For example, the debate on abortion, especially in countries where it is not outlawed, shows clearly that legal sanction does not necessarily rule out religious or moral concerns. From another perspective some researchers argue that criminalization of practices such as abortion or assisted dying may reveal a closer connection between law and religion than is usually admitted, especially in modern, largely secular, legal systems. Within the Islamic context, ethical thought emerged and developed in light of Islam’s foundational sources, the Qur'an and the Prophetic Sunnah. Over time the Islamic normative tradition comprised various types of systematic elaborations of Islamic ethics as reflected in fields such as theology, law, mysticism, philosophy, and literature.3 Contemporary (bio)ethical deliberations in the Muslim context build on these diverse resources of the Islamic normative tradition and reflect the effort to understand and actualize Islamic morality with regard to bioethical questions and dilemmas.4
In particular, the relationship between Islamic law and ethics has usually been emphasized to the extent that they are occasionally identified as one integrated system.5 Although the standard definition of Shari'ah often highlights purely legal enactments, the term, due to its emblematic connection with divine revelation, usually evokes special moral and theological significance.6 This, in turn, points out the difficulty of singling out Islamic law apart from these moral and theological dimensions.
On the other hand, the important distinction between Shari'ah, as an ideal divine system, and fiqh as a set of applied rules derived by jurists can illustrate the overlap and even confusion between Islamic law and ethics. While Shari'ah is conceived as an ethical-legal system that consists primarily in a divine moral vision for human conduct, human juristic approximation of this vision remains, like all types of human efforts, susceptible to error. Therefore while Islamic law, at the ideal Shari'ah level, cannot be conceived without its underlying moral vision, Islamic law, at the practical fiqh-level, can be said to have either fulfilled or overlooked such vision. This chapter examines the relationship between bioethics and the broader conceptualization of Islamic law under its Arabic counterpart and historically loaded term of Shari'ah. It will start by exploring some illustrative examples of premodern juristic discussions concerning medical questions and will then proceed to examine modern juristic deliberations on bioethical dilemmas.1
More on the topic Bioethics is a relatively new term that emerged during the second half of the 20th century to signify moral reflection and reasoning in the realm of the life sciences.:
- “ ‘Discovery’ in the moral realm”
- Moral Foundations of Legal Reasoning
- By the term “collective responsibility,” I will understand a collective consisting of two or more human moral agents that bears moral responsibility for an outcome that consists of a state of affairs.
- American life was transformed in the late 19th and 20th centuries by a series of forces sometimes termed “modernization.”
- RICHARD BIRTLES School of Environment and Life Sciences, University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK
- The messiness of moral life
- After the chaos of the period of Ruin subsided, the Hetmanate on the left bank of the Dnieper emerged as the center of Ukrainian political, cultural, and economic life.
- Theme 5. The Ukrainian Lands under the Rule of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the Second Half of the 16th - the First Half of the 17th Centuries)
- Theme 4. The Ukrainian Lands under the Rule of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland (the Second Half of the 14th - the First Half of the 16th Centuries)
- For three and a half centuries Europeans extended the bounds of their overseas possessions. In the half century that commenced in the 1770s the scope of imperial holdings shrank dramatically.
- Natural reasoning and deductive reasoning compared
- Islamic law and conceptualization of modern bioethics
- Collective moral responsibility is a species of moral responsibility and contrasts, in particular, with individual moral responsibility.