Previous Page

Audio Recording

Video Recording

Few bioethicists would ever argue against the reality of cultural diversity and the need for cultural sensitivity in medical settings.  However, culture diversity and cultural sensitivity do not in themselves undermine the idea of a global bioethics.  Second, the problem is that the arguments that some experts want to raise against global bioethics go much deeper than issues concerning cultural differences.  Their underlying assumption seems to be that the new global medicine requires a new ethic altogether—an ethic that addresses not only cultural diversity and the new complex questions that arise in medicine because of new technologies, but also one that addresses the issue of “ethical” diversity.         Now, it is one thing to acknowledge the reality of cultural diversity; it is quite another to claim that if there is cultural diversity, it follows that there is also ethical diversity.  The argument that is being made, in other words, is that ethics is subjective and particular.  In order to develop a new ethic, so the argument goes, which takes into consideration cultural and ethical diversity and questions arising from technological complexities, we must start from scratch.         Is that possible?  Can we start from scratch, from a moral vacuum as it were, and create a whole new “diverse” ethical system to meet the needs of modern medical ethical issues?  C.S. Lewis says it is simply not possible.  This session will explore several of Lewis’ arguments for the existence of an objective moral law and it will also address the relevance of his arguments to ethical decision-making in medicine.

Keywords:
disability, suffering, human dignity