Sárospataki Füzetek 14. (2010)

2010 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Rusthoven, James J.: Mit jelent embernek lenni a technika korában? Református keresztyén megközelítés.

Rusthoven, James J.

To understand the basis of contemporary concepts of personhood as they apply to biomedical issues, we need to understand the ethical frameworks that support these concepts. I will now describe both non-Christian and Christian ethical frameworks that support very different concepts of personhood and then show how these concepts can be applied to bioethical problems involving human embryos.

Non-Christian and Christian Bioethical Frameworks for Reflecting on Biomedical Issues

Since the mid-1970’s, biomedical ethics has been dominated by a secular paradigm known as principles-based ethics. This framework for reflecting and deliberating over bioethical issues developed out of an urgent need to prevent future unethical behaviour committed by academic researchers while conducting research on human subjects. Recognizing the societal concern over public revelations of such behaviour, the U. S. Congress commissioned a group of ethicists to identify principles of ethical conduct that would be broadly accepted by society including the scientific community. After four years of debate and substantial disagreement, the commission produced three such principles which were articulated in the Belmont Report.11

A year after publication of the report, two of the participants in the commission’s deliberations, Tom Beauchamp, a philosopher, and James Childress, a theologian, produced a book called Prindples of Biomedical Ethics. In their book they promote four principles that they claim are commonsense derivatives of a common morality. They consider these principles — autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice — to be self-evident by morally serious persons. Though roundly criticized over the intervening decades by both Christian and non- Christian ethicists as a process-driven ethic lacking moral grounding and moral content, their book is now in its 6th edition and continues to dominate bioethical teaching and discourse.12 The authors promote a process of moral deliberation and decision-making based on the belief that moral consensus can be achieved by repeated rational discourse and the gradual coherence of ideas over time using the guidance of these four principles. Beliefs of all participants in such discourse are valid, though religious beliefs have limited validity as the basis for ultimate moral consensus. Thus, their framework is based on belief in rational persuasion and mutual agreement on basic moral issues, setting aside divisive beliefs, which may include religious ones, for the sake of the coherence of ideas.

In their response, some Christian bioethicists have appealed to Scripture to support these principles as compatible with a natural moral sense based on natural law theory. Others, however, have used Scripture to criticize principles-based ethics as inadequate because of a lack of grounding in transcendent authority and of moral content. Unfortunately, few Christian ethicists have published systematic biblical critiques of this principles-based approach and provided an alternative ethical framework grounded in God’s Word. Two exceptions are Edmund Pellegrino,

11 The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research (1978) (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, DHEW publication No. (OS) 78-0014).

12 Beauchamp, T. L., and J. K. Childress (2009) Prindples of Medical Bioethics (6th ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press).

60 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK