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Results for “Ethical Relativism”

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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

New developments in international nursing ethics.

This article has described numerous activities in nursing ethics at international levels. It acknowledges the larger context within which nurses practice by focusing on selected issues involved in resource allocation and death and dying, cross-culturally. The questions raised about universally shared moral principles reflects the larger questions of cultural and ethical relativism. The discussions of new developments in international nursing ethics focuses on international conferences, the teaching of nursing ethics, national nursing associations, and other professional groups that are actively involved in health care or nursing ethics. Finally, the development of international nursing ethics research studies is providing new knowledge about the scope of ethics within nursing and the nature of nursing care worldwide. Nurses are involved in some aspects of these new developments in nursing ethics in all countries. As they examine and reflect on ethical principles, virtues, and on an ethics of caring, they bring a new dimension to their work as nurses. This new dimension stands as one of the oldest and most central foundations in professional nursing.

Advisory Committees↗
PubMed1989

Moral reasoning among medical geneticists in eighteen nations.

We surveyed the approaches of 661 geneticists in 18 nations to 14 clinical cases and asked them to give their ethical reasons for choosing these approaches. Patient autonomy was the dominant value in clinical decision-making, with 59% of responses, followed by non-maleficence (20%), beneficence (11%) and justice (5%). In all, 39% described the consequences of their actions, 26% mentioned conflicts of interest between different parties and 72% placed patient welfare above the welfare of others. The U.S., Canada, Sweden, and U.K. led in responses favoring autonomy. There were substantial international differences in moral reasoning. Gender differences in responses reflected women's greater attention to relationships and supported feminist ethical theories.

Asia↗
PubMed1995

Ethics, informed consent, and assisted reproduction.

Informed consent to treatment is an ethical requirement often misunderstood or not fully appreciated by physicians. The purpose of obtaining informed consent is to ensure that patients know what doctors propose to do and freely grant their permission. Although the purpose of informed consent and the standards by which it is to be employed are the same in all areas of medical practice, special problems arise in assisted reproduction. Voluntary, informed consent is an instance of a reproductive right that should be recognized by the international medical community, and not limited to Western and European countries.

Bioethics↗
PubMed1985

East meets west: some ethical considerations.

Japan, one of the most developed and industrialized countries in the world, may appear totally Westernized, but Japan has a culture of traditional customs and beliefs. This paper sheds light on the confusion of value orientations among Japanese nurses whose professional socialization is heavily influenced by Western culture and whose personal life depends on traditional culture. Examples of Japanese culture-bound values clarify the differences between Western and Japanese cultures. The importance of engaging in value clarification and analyzing the ethical principles behind decision-making is noted.

Communication↗
PubMed1983

The place of the ideal observer in medical ethics.

The idea of an ideal observer is frequently employed in ethical reasoning and has recently been introduced into medical ethics. The contemporary use of this idea, however, is deeply flawed. It ignores important social and personal dimensions of ethics. By espousing a perspective of observation removed from history and community, the ideal observer notion encourages a pretense of objectivity and overlooks the distortions of distance. If taken seriously as a model for choice, the ideal observer is incoherent, as it dispenses with the concrete moral agent and the locus of choice. Adam Smith's 'impartial spectator' is examined as a more adequate statement of the need for appreciating diverse perspectives in ethical choices.

Choice Behavior↗
PubMed1986

Principles and the search for moral certainty.

In medical ethics, principles have an important but frequently overextended role. The need for exact answers and moral formulae sometimes leads to the misuse of principles, such that they usurp the central place of persons and become ends in themselves. The Baby Jane Doe case is discussed as a prominent instance of both the proper uses and abuses of principles. A more fitting role for principles is described and illustrated, stressing the use of principles as tools of moral discernment and the time-laden character of moral judgments.

Abnormalities, Multiple↗
PubMed1987

Medical ethics, moral philosophy and moral tradition.

Medical ethics is commonly assumed to be a form of 'applied moral philosophy' in which practical moral judgments are deduced from moral theories. This account of the relationship between moral theory and moral judgment is inadequate in several reports. The deductivist approach often results in inadequate attention being given to social, historical and developmental contexts. It also fails to explain some common phenomena in practical moral reasoning. In contrast to the emphasis in deductivism, a case-centered or casuistic practical ethics insists on immersion in the particularities of cases and on interpretation of details in light of moral maxims and other mid-level forms of moral reasoning. Two features of casuistics that ought to be distinguished but frequently are not, are: (1) the emphasis on immersion and interpretation, and (2) a claim about the relation between moral judgment and moral theory as sources of moral knowledge. Once we consider case-centered moral judgments as sources of moral knowledge, we must also begin to look critically but open-mindedly to moral traditions which, upon examination, appear to be more dynamic and to have more reformist potential than is commonly assumed.

Cultural Diversity↗
PubMed1992

Can ethnography save the life of medical ethics?

Since its inception contemporary medical ethics has been regarded by many of its practitioners as 'applied ethics', that is, the application of philosophical theories to the moral problems that arise in health care. This 'applied ethics' model of medical ethics is, however, beset with internal and external difficulties. The internal difficulties point out that the model is intrinsically flawed. The external difficulties arise because the model does not fit work in the field. Indeed, the strengths of that work are its highly nuanced, particularized analyses of cases and issues and its appreciation of the circumstances and contexts that generate and structure these cases and issues. A shift away from a theory-driven 'applied ethics' to a more situational, contextual approach to medical ethics opens the way for ethnographic studies of moral problems in health care as well as a conception of moral theory that is more responsive to the empirical dimensions of those problems.

Anthropology, Cultural↗
PubMed1992

Ethics are local: engaging cross-cultural variation in the ethics for clinical research.

Relatively little consideration has heretofore been given to the interaction between Western clinical research ethics and non-Western ethical expectations. How should any conflict that might arise when a biomedical investigator and a research subject come from different cultural settings and have different ethical expectations be addressed? Which ethics should govern such trans-cultural clinical research? The answers to these questions are of increasing importance because many countries of the developing world are presently sites of field testing of biomedical agents sponsored and administered by countries of the developed world, especially in the context of the AIDS pandemic. Drawing mainly on examples from Asian medical systems and settings, I elucidate four possible ethical models to guide the conduct of transcultural biomedical research. Two assume that research ethics are culturally relative and two assume that a unified, universalistic conceptualization of research ethics is possible. All four, however, are problematic and are to a large extent deficient. The cause of the deficiencies of these models lies, I argue, in the way that ethics are ordinarily conceived. The proper approach to ethical conflict recognizes that culture shapes (1) the content of ethical precepts, (2) the form of ethical precepts, and (3) the way ethical conflict is handled. Medical ethics may be viewed in cross-cultural perspective as a form of 'local knowledge', and any differences in such knowledge between cultures--since such differences will not conveniently disappear--must be engaged and negotiated.

Beneficence↗
PubMed1993

Prenatal diagnosis and sex selection in 19 nations.

As part of a study of ethics and human genetics in 19 nations, we surveyed attitudes of 71 medical geneticists in 4 developing nations (Brazil, Greece, India and Turkey), and 611 geneticists in 15 developed nations, using anonymous questionnaires. Overall, 52% in India, 30% in Brazil, 29% in Greece, and 20% in Turkey would perform prenatal diagnosis to select a male fetus for a couple with 4 daughters and no sons. Sex selection is the major use of prenatal diagnosis in India. The majority in the U.S.A. (62%) and Hungary (60%) would also do sex selection or refer. We discuss possible means of preventing sex selection while avoiding medical paternalism and promoting the autonomy of women.

Attitude↗