There appears to be a conflict between global bioethical principles and the local understanding and application of these principles, but this conflict has misleadingly been characterized through the east–west dichotomy. This dichotomy portrays bioethical principles as western and as alien to non-western cultures. In this paper, I present reasons to reject the east–west dichotomy. Using the discussion around the principle of informed consent as an example, I propose that while bioethical values are common, bioethical governance must display a certain flexibility (...) akin to Aristotle’s metaphor about the Lesbian rule. Such flexibility combined with a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of bioethical subjects might lead to the purging of tensions between global and local, giving us Glocal Bioethics. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page W12-W14.

In the third and subsequent editions of Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Tom Beauchamp and James Childress articulate a series of ethical norms that they regard as “derived” from, and hence carrying, the “authority” of the common morality. Although Beauchamp and Childress do not claim that biomedical norms they derive from the common morality automatically become constituents of the common morality, or that every detail of their account carries the authority of the common morality, they regard these derived norms as provisionally (...) binding in a way that does not apply to the norms of mere “particular” moralities. Whereas particular moralities “do not bind other persons or communities,” Beauchamp and Childress have designed the norms of Principles of Biomedical Ethics to be “extensions” of the common morality that universally binds other persons and communities. Beauchamp and Childress seem to hold that (1) the norms they articulate in Principles of Biomedical Ethics are derived in an objective way from the common morality, and also that by virtue of being so derived (2) they carry a moral authority that objectively exceeds the authority of norms constituting particular moralities. My thesis in this essay is that both of these claims are false. (shrink)