Is it time for bioethics to go empirical?

Bioethics

Volumn 22, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 137-146

  Herrera, Chris ^a  

^a MONTCLAIR STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Applied ethics; Methodology; Principlism; Social science

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOETHICS; EMPIRICAL RESEARCH; ETHICS; HUMAN; METHODOLOGY; SOCIOLOGY;

BIOETHICS; EMPIRICAL RESEARCH; ETHICAL ANALYSIS; HUMANS; SOCIAL SCIENCES;

EID: 42949115002     PISSN: 02699702     EISSN: 14678519     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2007.00621.x     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Some early critiques of the field are discussed in Gorovitz S. Baiting bioethics. Ethics 1986; 96: 356-374. I will concentrate my attention, however, on only three or four more recent critics who best illustrate the case against bioethics methodology.
2. A. Kleinman. Moral Experience and Ethical Reflection: Can Ethnography Reconcile Them? A Quandary for the 'New Bioethics'. Daedulus 1999 128 : 69 97
3. A.M. Hedgecoe. Critical Bioethics: Beyond the Social Science Critique of Applied Ethics. Bioethics 2004 18 : 120 43
4. B. Hoffmaster. Introduction. In: Hoffmaster B, ed. Bioethics in Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001; 1-11, p. 2-3.
5. B. Hoffmaster. Can Ethnography Save the Life of Medical Ethics? Social Science & Medicine 1992 35 : 1421 1431
6. Lopez, J. (2000 How sociology can save bioethics. maybe Sociology of Health & Illness 26 (7 875 896
7. B. Fulford. The Paradoxes of Confidentiality. In: Cordress C, ed. Confidentiality and Mental Health. London: J. Kingsley Publishers, 2001; 7-23, p. 11.
8. B. Hoffmaster. Introduction. In: Hoffmaster B, ed. Bioethics in Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001; 1-11, p. 1424.
9. Hedgecoe, 2004, p. 142.
10. R.C. Fox J. Swazey. Medical Morality is not Bioethics. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1984 27 : 337 360.
11. B. Hoffmaster. Introduction. In: Hoffmaster B, ed. Bioethics in Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001; 1-11, p. 1.
12. Fox, 1999, as cited in Hedgecoe, p. 123.
13. Hedgecoe 2004, p. 121.
14. See, e.g. R. DeVries, J. Subedi. Preface. In: DeVries R, Subedi J, eds. Bioethics and Society: Constructing the Ethical Enterprise. Upper Saddle River, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1998; 11-19.
15. B. Hoffmaster. Can Ethnography Save the Life of Medical Ethics? Social Science & Medicine 1992 35 : 1421 1431.
16. J. Rachels. When Philosophers Shoot from the Hip. Bioethics 1991 5 : 67 71.
17. Citing the popular Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Hedgecoe scolds the authors for claiming that their theory 'conforms to the way that virtually all persons learn to think morally' (Beauchamp & Childress, as cited in Hedgecoe, p. 131). Hedgecoe takes issue with this 'relaxed use of empirical claims' (p. 132), adding that 'at the core of the social sciences is a commitment to root one's ideas in social reality, which it is not necessarily the case with philosophy' (p. 132). While Hedgecoe is probably making too much of one sentence (from a book of some 400 pages) when he claims that it constitutes proof of a problematic 'institutional attitude of bioethics towards the social sciences as a whole' (p. 132), the position he takes on the solution that the social science represents is consistent with that of other critics.
18. R. Zussman. The contributions of sociology to medical ethics. Hastings Center Report 2000 30 : 7 11.
19. C. Elliott, Where ethics comes from and what to do about it. Hastings Center Report, 22 (4 28 35, 1992
20. M.A. DeWachter. Sociology and Bioethics in the U.S.A. Hastings Center Report 1998 28 : 40 42.
21. J. Evans. A Sociological Account of the Growth of Principlism. Hastings Center Report 2000 30 : 31 38.
22. K.D. Clouser B. Gert. A critique of principlism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1990 15 : 219 236.
23. B. Almond. Seeking wisdom. Philosophy 1997 72 : 417 433.
24. J. Harris. The Scope and Importance of Bioethics. In: Harris J, ed. Bioethics. NY: Oxford University Press, 2001; 1-22, p. 13.
25. Dierickx, K. The Birth of the Empirical Turn in Bioethics. Bioethics, 19 (1 49 71, 2005
26. B. Hoffmaster. Introduction. In: Hoffmaster B, ed. Bioethics in Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001; 1-11, p. 9.
27. Hoffmaster 1992, p. 1425.
28. E. Haimes. What can the social sciences contribute to the study of ethics? Bioethics 2002 16 : 90 113
29. Alderson 1990.
30. Kaufman, S.R. Construction and Practice of Medical Responsibility: Dilemmas and Narratives from Geriatrics. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 21 : 1 26, 1997
31. T.L. Beauchamp. A Defense of the Common Morality. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 2003 13 : 259 274 Macklin. Ethical Relativism in a Multicultural Society. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 1998 8 : 1 22.
32. The comparison of methods needn't be held to a scientific standard to make the point. But such a comparison could be made scientific, as it might be possible to survey those with a stake in the future of bioethics (e.g. scholars, patients, healthcare workers) and let them decide which discussions are most plausible. A skeptic might say that this is already done, to some extent, by way of peer-review in the bioethics literature, but peer-review leaves open the system of validation that critics distrust, so it could serve as one 'arm' of such a study, but never the final source of judgment.
33. R.M. Veatch. Abandoning Informed Consent. Hastings Center Report 1995 25 : 5 12.
34. J. Song, E.R. Ratner, D.M. Bartels. Dying While Homeless: Is it a Concern when Life itself is Such a Struggle? Journal of Clinical Ethics 2005 16 : 251 261.
35. Bosk (2000) also provides very useful reflections on the inter-disciplinary prospects of bioethics and social science. Bosk, C. The Sociological Imagination and Bioethics. In Handbook of Medical Sociology, pp. 223-241. Edited by Bird, C.E., and Conrad, P., 223-241, Englewood, NJ Prentice-Hall, 2000.
36. C. Bosk. Irony, Ethnography, and Informed Consent In: Hoffmaster B, ed. Bioethics in Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001; 199-227.
37. Zussman (2000) and others worry that bioethicists will only then make social scientists 'junior partners,' that is, asking them to do little more than 'fact-checking' (10; see also Hedgecoe, 2004). This worry might be unnecessary. Anyone who suggests that only trivial work would be involved or needed when testing empirical claims is greatly over-simplifying the picture.