Konstantinos Symeonides | PubMed Health

PubMed2004

Bioethics and the determination of personhood.

In today's technological world, humanity continuously surpasses the limits set by previous achievements. Although evidence of such progress exists in several fields of study, one clearly sees this in the medical and biotechnological fields. Despite the countless opportunities for longer, more productive lives, medicine and science have regressed in their conception of the human person. In an effort to overcome any moral and legal ramifications that research and medical practices entail, physicians and researchers have come to reduce personhood to only a matter of biological qualities and functioning. This essay attempts to show, first of all, the classical Christian understanding of the person, currently held by the Orthodox Church. It then looks at three fields of bioethical discussion; namely, abortion, brain death, and human embryonic cloning, and shows how each issue reduces the human person to his or her biological components. The essay concludes by suggesting a return to an understanding of personhood based on personal and communal levels of relationships.

Abortion, Induced↗

PubMed2004

Bioethics as a scientific enterprise.

The authors of this article attempt to look at the manner in which the field of bioethics has emerged to represent an entirely new science. The article does this by first looking at various developments in the field of medicine and science. Specifically, the authors point to the developments in pharmacology, biology, and in genetics, as the stimuli for the field of bioethics. Since these three fields of study directly deal with human beings and their respective environment, new developments in these respective areas of science have questioned what society has traditionally held concerning these two concepts. In an effort to help answer such questions, the field of bioethics has emerged. The authors argue that bioethics represents more than just a theoretical field. Instead, bioethics, as an entirely new science in itself, has the ability to provide answers to the question, and moral dilemmas that new developments in other sciences raise. The article attempts to show that science/medicine has direct links to proper therapy and procedures. The authors do this by making a direct connection between ethics and medicine, as Hippocrates understood. For Hippocrates, medicine and science should be distinguished from religion, but not from proper ethos. Therefore, the authors argue that the field of bioethics has gained its status as a scientific enterprise since it provides the ability for scientists and physicians to conduct their work in an ethos that aims to protect the human person.

Bioethics↗