Religious voices were important in the early days of the contemporary field of bioethics but have now become decidedly less prominent. This is unfortunate because religious elements are essential parts of the most foundational aspects of bioethics. The problem is that there is an incommensurability between religious language and languages of public discourse such as the “public reason” of John Rawls. To eliminate what is unique in religious language is to lose something essential. This paper examines the reasons for the (...) marginalization of religion in bioethics, shows the limitations of Rawls’s notion of public reason, and argues for a more robust role for theology in articulating a new language for public discourse in bioethics. (shrink)

This article highlights the continuing relevance of a classic bioethical text, “Bioethics as a Discipline,” published by the Hastings Center’s cofounder Daniel Callahan in 1973. Connecting the text’s programmatic recommendations with later reflections and interventions Callahan wrote about the development of bioethics illuminates how the vision Callahan established and the reality this vision helped create were interrelated—just not in the way Callahan had hoped for. Although this portrait relies on an individual perception of the development of bioethics, it might nevertheless, (...) through its unique linkage of different bioethical temporalities, contribute to a broader reassessment of what bioethics became and why. (shrink)

Bioethics can be considered as a topic, an academic discipline, a field of study, an enterprise in persuasion. The historical specificity of the forms bioethics takes is significant, and raises questions about some of these approaches. Bioethics can also be considered as a governance practice, with distinctive institutions and structures. The forms this practice takes are also to a degree country specific, as the paper illustrates by drawing on the author’s UK experience. However, the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics can (...) provide a starting point for comparisons provided that this does not exclude sensitivity to the socio-political context. Bioethics governance practices are explained by various legitimating narratives. These include response to scandal, the need to restrain irresponsible science, the accommodation of pluralist views, and the resistance to the relativist idea that all opinions count equally in bioethics. Each approach raises interesting questions and shows that bioethics should be studied as a governance practice as a complement to other approaches. (shrink)

A project featuring scholars in nursing ethics was planned in 2005. The goal was to document the contributions of some 24 selected American nurse ethicists to bioethics, and to discuss and explore the future trajectory of that work through a two-day working seminar. This article outlines the beginnings of bioethics in the USA and the specific contribution of nurse scholars to the debate, the preparation for the seminar, the results of the project, and the possible application of such a model (...) for teaching and archiving in the future. Documentation of the work carried out at the seminar resulted in the publication of a book. Short biographies of the participants at the seminar are included in Appendix 1. (shrink)

A pattern of social behavior usually refers to the relatively permanent, recurrent and objective social behavior of human beings that emerge as a reality in interacting with one another as members of society. However, it is not possible for all human beings to be the same regarding age, gender, taste, physical structure, face and appearance, personality, skin color, intellectual and social characteristics, etc. Although people in general realize their situation and characters, some characteristics become justified by them as undesirable and (...) social stigmas appear. This study was conducted in Gopalpur village of Natore district. The objective of this study was to explore the patterns of social stigma among rural women in Bangladesh. Several methods such as social survey method through scheduled interview, focus group discussions, informal meetings, spot observations have been used to explore and gain a critical view of overall aspects of social stigma in the study area. The study found that all of the women were stigmatized on the basis of one issue or another. Social stigma may occur in many different forms. The most common forms that occur are related to socio-cultural identity, family, poverty, ignorance, physical structure, gender, skin color, disease etc. In this study women who had been stigmatized felt as if they had been transformed from a whole person into a tainted one. They felt themselves as different and devalued by others. Social policies should promote inclusion of all people in socioeconomic activities and prevent the processes of stigmatization and social exclusion. (shrink)