Introduction to Global Bioethics

Bioethics

• Definition: Ethics that, considering scientific data, rationally analyzes the morality of human intervention on human life and on the environment.

• Objects: Material- moral dimension/ Formal-reason

Ethics ≠ Legality: laws should always protect human goods and coincide with the contents of ethics. However, unethical practices were allowed by law in the past (e.g. slavery) and today. Some actions might be legal, but not ethical.

Ethics ≠ Technical Possibility: not everything technically possible, is ethically good and convenient for the human being and the planet (e.g. nuclear weapons).

Lílian Santos

lilian.santos@upra.org

Introduction to Global Bioethics

• History
• Current need

1927

Fritz Jahr "Bioethik"

1960s

Medical advances

1969

Daniel John CallahanHastings Center

1971

Potter “Bioethics: brigde to the future”

Hellegers Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University

1978

IVF

1979

Tom Beauchamp - James Childress "Principles of Biomedical Ethics"

1988

Potter "Global Bioethics"

2003

Human Genome Project

2005

Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

2010-

NBIC Technologies

GAP 90/10

Exclusive: World’s first baby born with new “3 parent” technique

Info

Nebraska grandmother acts as surrogate for gay son

Google Baby

Homem trans engravida para realizar sonho do casal de ter filho

Info

Info

Info

Twins born from embryos frozen 30 years ago

I can't let go of my remaining embryos

Brasil: Vale vai pagar 7 mil milhões de dólares pela tragédia de Brumadinho em 2019

Info

Info

Migrantes climáticos

Info

Sequías y bioética

CRISPR-Cas9

Emmanuelle Charpentier - Jennifer Doudna 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

He Jiankui and the first CRISPR babies

Japan approves first human-animal embryo experiments

Info

Scientists grow whole model of human embryo, without sperm or egg

Info

The Internet of Bodies Will Change Everything, for Better or Worse

Info

Biohackers, cyborgs, DIYbio

Transhumanism: Meet the cyborgs and biohackers redefining beauty

Info

Biohacking and Transhumanism

Article

What?DIYbio

Conclusion

Why? H+

Is it right?Bioethics and Governance

DIY strongly exemplifies transhumanist behaviour (cf. Natasha Vita-More, 2019).

Models and Method

• Currents of thought in Bioethics
• Methodology

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism

01

Actions are good insofar as they promote pleasure and avoid pain.

in Bioethics

02

Good: more pleasure, less pain for as many people as possible.

Consequences

03

When a being is not capable of suffering and enjoyment, there is nothing to take into account.

Principalism

step 1

Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in

JUSTICE

AUTONOMY

BENEFICENCE

NON MALEFICENCE

+info

Personalism

04

03

02

01

Freedom and Responsability

Sociability and Subsidiarity

Totality and Therapy

Defence of physical life

• Sgreccia, E. (1994). Manuale di bioetica. Fondamenti ed etica biomedica. Vita e Pensiero. p. 171–180.
• Quintana, C. (2011). Sgreccia: una bioética católica [BLOG]. Recuperado el día 10/02/17 en http://www.bioeticadesdeasturias.com/2011/12/esgreccia-una-bioetica-catolica.html

Principlism vs Personalism

Principlist stance:

• There is no reference anthropology to justify the principles, establish an order between them and thus resolve the conflicts of duties and problematic cases.
• Principles and specifications are not absolute but always prima facie: their binding nature is relative to the occurrence of what is understood to be a greater obligation.

Personalist stance:

• Founded in classical Thomism and contemporary personalism.
• It promotes the integral good of the human person.
• It needs to continue to expand and develop as a rational (and not a theological) model.
• Philosophical analysis has to be adapted to the bioethical environment (dealing with people who may not be in their full condition).

García, J. J. (2012). Bioética Personalista y Bioética Principialista. Perspectivas [BLOG]. Recuperado el día 10, Febrero, 2017 en http://www.bioeticaweb.com/bioactica-personalista-y-bioactica-principialista-perspectivas/

Quintana, C. (2011). Sgreccia: una bioética católica [BLOG]. Recuperado el día 10, Febrero, 2017 en http://www.bioeticadesdeasturias.com/2011/12/esgreccia-una-bioetica-catolica.html

Triangular Method

Global Bioethics (global in scope and content)

Anthropological-valuative reading

Bioethical situation-question

Ethical and normative elaboration

Scientific fact

• Physical, corporeal life is the fundamental value of the person because the person cannot exist except in a body as co-essential to the person, i.e. as the sole and necessary basis for his or her existence in time and space.

• Nor can freedom exist without physical life: to be free and to have human rights it is necessary to be alive. One cannot be free and defend basic rights if one does not have life. Life comes before freedom. Therefore, when freedom suppresses life it is a freedom that suppresses itself and, consequently, eliminates the basis of human rights.

• Only the total and spiritual good of the person is above the value of physical life.

• It encompasses the concept that the person is free, but is free to achieve the good of himself and the good of others and of the whole world, for the world has been entrusted to human responsibility.
• Freedom cannot be exercised without exercising responsibility. A bioethics of responsibility towards other people, towards oneself and, above all, towards one's own life, the life of other people and the life of other living beings must be pursued.
• However, as stated in the first principle, the right to the defence of life has priority over the right to freedom, that is to say, in order to be free it is essential to be alive because life is a necessary condition for the exercise of freedom.

Principles of Personalist Bioethics

• Defence of physical life: one cannot exist, be free, have human rights without life;
• Freedom and responsibility: achieving individual and collective good.
• Totality and therapy: the organism is organically unified. It is permissible to intervene on one part in order to save the whole organism;
• Sociability and subsidiarity: life is a social good, not just an individual one. Society must help without substituting individual initiatives. It implies solidarity;

Cf. Sgreccia, E. (1994) Manuale di Bioetica. Fondamenti ed etica biomedica. Vita e Pensiero. p. 171–180.

FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONALIST PHILOSOPHY

• From what to who: not a thing but an unrepeatable individual subject
• Three-dimensional structure of the person: body, psyche and spirit.autonomous
• original and structural character of affectivity.
• Interpersonal relations: dialogicality of the world.
• Primacy of freedom and love.
• Corporeality. Sexuality. Man as male and female.
• Other features: the narrative character of the person, the relevance of subjectivity, etc.

Burgos, J. (2011). Filosofía personalista como fundamento de la Bioética personalista [BLOG]. Recuperado el día 10, Febrero, 2017 en http://enciclopediadebioetica.com/index.php/todas-las-voces/189-la-filosofia-personalista-como-fundamento-de-la-bioetica-personalista

Principles of Personalist Bioethics

• Defence of physical life: one cannot exist, be free, have human rights without life;
• Freedom and responsibility: achieving individual and collective good.
• Totality and therapy: the organism is organically unified. It is permissible to intervene on one part in order to save the whole organism;
• Sociability and subsidiarity: life is a social good, not just an individual one. Society must help without substituting individual initiatives. It implies solidarity;

Cf. Sgreccia, E. (1994) Manuale di Bioetica. Fondamenti ed etica biomedica. Vita e Pensiero. p. 171–180.

Self-aware organisms deserve full moral consideration because they:

• They experience pain and pleasure
• They are aware of their own existence and context
• They prefer to experience a pleasurable life
• They prefer to stay alive

Small babies, people in comas and people with certain types of brain defects do not exhibit these characteristics. For utilitarians, these "marginal" human beings deserve less moral consideration than other human beings, and even than some nonhuman animals.

• Every person is obliged to self-fulfilment by participating in the realisation of the good of his fellow human beings and, since human life is a personal and also a social good, each person must commit himself to protect life as a patrimony of society and not only of each personal individual.
• Likewise, subsidiarity is a principle that complements the previous one by saying that society has the double obligation to assist or help more where the needs are more serious and urgent, without supplanting or substituting the free initiatives of citizens, either individually or in association. This principle implies the practice of solidarity.

• The human body is a unitary whole made up of distinct parts, organically and hierarchically unified with each other by a single, personal existence.
• It is permissible to intervene on a part of the body when there is no other way to heal or save the whole body.
• The following conditions are required: 1st) that the intervention is carried out on the diseased part, 2nd) that there are no alternative means of treatment, 3rd) that the chances of therapeutic success are good, 4th) that there is the informed consent of the person or his legitimate representative.