The need for explicit theoretical reflection on cross-cultural bioethics continues to grow as the spread of communication technologies and increased human migration has made interactions between medical professionals and patients from different cultural backgrounds much more common. I claim that this need presents us with the following dilemma. On the one hand, we do not want to operate according to an imperialist ethical framework that denies and silences the legitimacy of cultural values other than our own. On the other hand, (...) we do not want to backslide into a form of cultural relativism that is unable to critically appraise cultural practices that are harmful, unjust, or oppressive. I examine two prominent attempts – the principlism of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress and the Contractarianism of Robert Baker – to frame cross-cultural bioethics between these two extremes and argue that both approaches have significant flaws. The principlist approach fails to provide a non-question begging way to identify cross-cultural norms that does not already assume the universal legitimacy of moral principles dominant in North American society. Baker's contractarianism cannot grapple with the realities of political power imbalances that often characterize cross-cultural moral disputes. I suggest that a naturalized feminist framework, though not free of its own theoretical difficulties, provides the best alternative for approaching moral diversity respectfully and critically. (shrink)

We identify the ways the policies of leading international bioethics journals limit the participation of researchers working in the resource-constrained settings of low- and middle-income countries in the development of the field of bioethics. Lack of access to essential scholarly resources makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for many LMIC bioethicists to learn from, meaningfully engage in, and further contribute to the global bioethics discourse. Underrepresentation of LMIC perspectives in leading journals sustains the hegemony of Western bioethics, limits the (...) presentation of diverse moral visions of life, health, and medicine, and undermines aspirations to create a truly “global” bioethics. Limited attention to this problem indicates a lack of empathy and moral imagination on the part of bioethicists in high-income countries, raises questions about the ethics of bioethics, and highlights the urgent need to find ways to remedy this social injustice. (shrink)

Judgment on rightness and wrongness of beliefs and behaviors is a main issue in bioethics. Over centuries, big philosophers and ethicists have been discussing the suitable tools to determine which act is morally sound and which one is not. Emerging the contemporary bioethics in the West has resulted in a misconception that absolute westernized principles would be appropriate tools for ethical decision making in different cultures. We will discuss this issue by introducing a clinical case. Considering various cultural beliefs around (...) the world, though it is not logical to consider all of them ethically acceptable, we can gather on some general fundamental principles instead of going to the extremes of relativism and absolutism. Islamic teachings, according to the presented evidence in this paper, fall in with this idea. (shrink)