SPECIAL SECTION: CONSENSUS IN BIOETHICS:
NEGOTIATING THE CHALLENGE OF MORAL PLURALISM SPECIAL SECTION: CONSENSUS IN BIOETHICS:
NEGOTIATING THE CHALLENGE OF MORAL PLURALISM
Bioethics and Healthcare Reform: A Whig Response to Weak Consensus
GRIFFIN TROTTER M.D., Ph.D. a1 a1 Center for Health Care Ethics and Department of Surgery,
Emergency Medicine Division, at Saint Louis University
Abstract
Contemporary bioethics begins with the perception that
medical values are a matter of public, rather than merely
professional, interest. Such was the message of delegates in
Helsinki and of the New Jersey court that decided for Quinlan.
It is a theme that lurks within almost every major bioethical
treatise since the first edition of Principles
of
Bioethics.
This perception also undergirds the increasingly popular suggestion
that moral authority in the patient-physician relationship resides
neither in the medical profession, nor in the singular will
of the patient, but in moral communities that link both parties
with higher social orders.
