Personalism as an open-minded perspective in medical ethics, with special attention to the ethical integration of organ donation

Abstract

Medical ethics enjoyed a remarkable degree of continuity from the days of Hippocrates until its long-standing traditions began to be supplanted, or at least supplemented, around the middle of the twentieth century: “In the last third of the twentieth century, developments in the biological and health sciences and in biomedical technology presented a number of challenges to traditional professional ethics in medicine and nursing.” This is one of the starting sentences of the Anglo-American book of Beauchamp and Childress, which became the referential work for the discipline of ‘bioethics’. It is also the textbook for the yearly organised Intensive Course on Bioethics at Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.). They defend(ed) the four principles approach to biomedical ethics, an approach which somewhat disparagingly has been called Principlism. The influence of their work has been so profound that bioethics seems to have become overwhelmed by the significance of their contribution. It even created a large separation between Anglo- American approaches in bioethics (also including the UK centres) and the European-Continental approach (more linked to basic philosophical mainstreams, such as the Aristotelian, Thomistic and Kantian traditions and the more recent influence of phenomenology and existentialism). In any case, contemporary biomedical ethics encompasses theoretical conflicts of considerable complexity, and the diverse theories do not make it any easier.