PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Ethical Relativism”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

New developments in international nursing ethics.

This article has described numerous activities in nursing ethics at international levels. It acknowledges the larger context within which nurses practice by focusing on selected issues involved in resource allocation and death and dying, cross-culturally. The questions raised about universally shared moral principles reflects the larger questions of cultural and ethical relativism. The discussions of new developments in international nursing ethics focuses on international conferences, the teaching of nursing ethics, national nursing associations, and other professional groups that are actively involved in health care or nursing ethics. Finally, the development of international nursing ethics research studies is providing new knowledge about the scope of ethics within nursing and the nature of nursing care worldwide. Nurses are involved in some aspects of these new developments in nursing ethics in all countries. As they examine and reflect on ethical principles, virtues, and on an ethics of caring, they bring a new dimension to their work as nurses. This new dimension stands as one of the oldest and most central foundations in professional nursing.

Advisory Committees↗
PubMed1989

Moral reasoning among medical geneticists in eighteen nations.

We surveyed the approaches of 661 geneticists in 18 nations to 14 clinical cases and asked them to give their ethical reasons for choosing these approaches. Patient autonomy was the dominant value in clinical decision-making, with 59% of responses, followed by non-maleficence (20%), beneficence (11%) and justice (5%). In all, 39% described the consequences of their actions, 26% mentioned conflicts of interest between different parties and 72% placed patient welfare above the welfare of others. The U.S., Canada, Sweden, and U.K. led in responses favoring autonomy. There were substantial international differences in moral reasoning. Gender differences in responses reflected women's greater attention to relationships and supported feminist ethical theories.

Asia↗
PubMed1987

Medical ethics, moral philosophy and moral tradition.

Medical ethics is commonly assumed to be a form of 'applied moral philosophy' in which practical moral judgments are deduced from moral theories. This account of the relationship between moral theory and moral judgment is inadequate in several reports. The deductivist approach often results in inadequate attention being given to social, historical and developmental contexts. It also fails to explain some common phenomena in practical moral reasoning. In contrast to the emphasis in deductivism, a case-centered or casuistic practical ethics insists on immersion in the particularities of cases and on interpretation of details in light of moral maxims and other mid-level forms of moral reasoning. Two features of casuistics that ought to be distinguished but frequently are not, are: (1) the emphasis on immersion and interpretation, and (2) a claim about the relation between moral judgment and moral theory as sources of moral knowledge. Once we consider case-centered moral judgments as sources of moral knowledge, we must also begin to look critically but open-mindedly to moral traditions which, upon examination, appear to be more dynamic and to have more reformist potential than is commonly assumed.

Cultural Diversity↗
PubMed1992

Can ethnography save the life of medical ethics?

Since its inception contemporary medical ethics has been regarded by many of its practitioners as 'applied ethics', that is, the application of philosophical theories to the moral problems that arise in health care. This 'applied ethics' model of medical ethics is, however, beset with internal and external difficulties. The internal difficulties point out that the model is intrinsically flawed. The external difficulties arise because the model does not fit work in the field. Indeed, the strengths of that work are its highly nuanced, particularized analyses of cases and issues and its appreciation of the circumstances and contexts that generate and structure these cases and issues. A shift away from a theory-driven 'applied ethics' to a more situational, contextual approach to medical ethics opens the way for ethnographic studies of moral problems in health care as well as a conception of moral theory that is more responsive to the empirical dimensions of those problems.

Anthropology, Cultural↗
PubMed1992

Ethics are local: engaging cross-cultural variation in the ethics for clinical research.

Relatively little consideration has heretofore been given to the interaction between Western clinical research ethics and non-Western ethical expectations. How should any conflict that might arise when a biomedical investigator and a research subject come from different cultural settings and have different ethical expectations be addressed? Which ethics should govern such trans-cultural clinical research? The answers to these questions are of increasing importance because many countries of the developing world are presently sites of field testing of biomedical agents sponsored and administered by countries of the developed world, especially in the context of the AIDS pandemic. Drawing mainly on examples from Asian medical systems and settings, I elucidate four possible ethical models to guide the conduct of transcultural biomedical research. Two assume that research ethics are culturally relative and two assume that a unified, universalistic conceptualization of research ethics is possible. All four, however, are problematic and are to a large extent deficient. The cause of the deficiencies of these models lies, I argue, in the way that ethics are ordinarily conceived. The proper approach to ethical conflict recognizes that culture shapes (1) the content of ethical precepts, (2) the form of ethical precepts, and (3) the way ethical conflict is handled. Medical ethics may be viewed in cross-cultural perspective as a form of 'local knowledge', and any differences in such knowledge between cultures--since such differences will not conveniently disappear--must be engaged and negotiated.

Beneficence↗
PubMed1990

An ethnomedical perspective of medical ethics.

Ethnomedicine is the field that analyzes medical traditions comparatively. An ethnomedical approach is used in the essay to analyze the topic of medical ethics. General properties of medical ethics as realized in different societies are outlined. These pertain to the healer's relations with clients, with other healers, and with the group or society. The conditions of medical practice and the influence of social and political factors that affect them are discussed in relation to medical ethical questions. Unique developments of contemporary medical science that affect and condition practice and raise new ethical questions are examined in light of ethnomedical generalizations. The essay aims to clarify the cultural bases of medicine generally and ethical aspects of medical practice and care more specifically.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1991

Clinical judgment and bioethics: the decision making link.

The literature on bioethics is diverse and confusing in its treatment of appropriate components for decision making. As a result, the literature on teaching bioethics is also confusing, even contradictory, in presenting an 'appropriate' framework within which learners may come to understand the nature and process of bioethics. The article sets out five decision components which are seen as common to all decision making. These components are then shown to have a significant influence both on bioethics decision making and on bioethics teaching. They are also shown to play a role in breaking down the separatism evidenced in contemporary bioethics literature aimed at individual professions.

Beneficence↗
PubMed1991

Conceptions of morality and the doctrine of double effect.

Whether one should accept a principle like DDE cannot be settled independent of one's more general moral theory. In this, I take it, I agree with Professor Boyle, though I do not think he has shown that DDE has a role only in his particular form of absolutism. Still, since his theory does require DDE, an important question is what the alternatives are--whether we must choose between this absolutism and either utilitarianism or intuitionism. A form of contractualism, the requirements of which derive to a large extent from institutionally or conventionally established rights, is sketched here as an attractive alternative. It does not lead, so far as I can see, to DDE.

Bioethical Issues↗