Biomedical subjects
G R Dunstan
Publications and source records attributed to G R Dunstan.
Screening for fetal and genetic abnormality: social and ethical issues.
In answer to questions raised by practitioners, an ethics of genetic screening is located in a tension between liberty and responsibility in three respects: (1) to nature and biological processes; (2) to the disposal of human life; and (3) to the relation of persons to society. Under (1), the obligation to pursue research, fundamental as well as applied, is affirmed, offering the benefit of economy with fetal life, but requiring discrimination between the beneficial, the trivial, and the bizarre. Under (2) the abortion question, when relevant to diagnosed abnormality, is discussed, not in the language of conflicting rights, but of the relation of duties to interests. Under (3) the familial and social dimensions of screening raise questions of the disclosure of information and the keeping or extending of confidences. Last comes the value placed on truth in two related areas of developing practice. In infertility treatment, the donors of gametes are required to remain anonymous. Gene tracing through families requires for its effectiveness some correspondence between assumed identity and genetic identity. This conflict of social policies should be resolved.
The authority of a moral claim: Ian Ramsey and the practice of medicine.
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In-vitro fertilization: the ethics.
This paper is addressed to practitioners. It seeks to acquaint them with 'ethical' arguments against their work which, because they are simple and plausible, persuade many people. These arguments are briefly rehearsed and as briefly examined. A more positive ethics of in-vitro fertilization is presented which seeks to respect (a) what is known in the relevant science and done in developing practice; (b) the inseparability of research from clinical application; (c) a moral tradition of long-standing which relates the protection of fetal life pari passu with its own morphological growth towards maturity; (d) the moral sense of properly informed persons whose judgements we trust in other areas of life. Practitioners themselves are to be defended as the proper moral agents (that is, to be entrusted with decisions) provided that they are careful (a) to keep public confidence by means of a corporate self-discipline; (b) to keep faith with patients and research subjects; (c) to maintain mutual trust between research scientists and clinical practitioners; (d) to safeguard the liberty of disciplined enquiry, of purposeful curiosity, as being inherent in the notion of a science, necessary to therapeutic advance, and proper to the nature of man. The author writes from within the theological tradition of the Church of England.
Hard questions in intensive care. A moralist answers questions put to him at a meeting of the Intensive Care Society, Autumn, 1984.
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Ethical aspects of donor insemination.
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