Abstract
Bioethics is a field that has defined itself in moral controversies. For example, bioethics has emerged as a discipline in the attempts to resolve moral controversies surrounding medical practices and health care policies in areas such as experimentation and research, abortion, reproduction, and the allocation of resources in health care. One source of constant moral controversy has been the issues surrounding death and dying. There have been controversies about the definition of death, the extent of the obligation to treat the dying, the use of resources for the care of the dying, euthanasia, and assisted suicide. From the celebrated cases in the United States of Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Beth Cruzan to the ruling on assisted suicide in the state of Washington (see, Compassion in Dying) the controversies of death and dying have been part of bioethics and public policy.
Reprinted from: Kazumasa Hoshino (ed.), Japanese and Western Bioethics, 89–10 l. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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Notes
- 1.
For an excellent overview of the Christian tradition on abortion see Noonan 1970.
- 2.
There is in Buddhism the practice of self-immolation which has not been understood as an act of euthanasia or suicide. Rather it is understood as the practice of giving one’s self over and merging one’s self into transitory reality (see Fujii 1991).
- 3.
This discussion of general secular bioethics and sanctity of life has grown out of many long discussions with H.T. Engelhardt, Jr. and work that we have done together (see Engelhardt 1996).
- 4.
There are publications prior to 1950 exploring “the sanctity of life” (see Hillis 1921; Young 1932). In bioethics there was a renewal of some of the concerns of Albert Schweitzer for a reverence for life. In the New England Journal of Medicine William Sperry wrote that “reverence for life” is the ethical basis of both the profession of medicine and Christian ministry (Sperry 1948, 988).
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Wildes, K.W. (2015). Sanctity of Life: A Study in Ambiguity and Confusion. In: Rasmussen, L., Iltis, A., Cherry, M. (eds) At the Foundations of Bioethics and Biopolitics: Critical Essays on the Thought of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 125. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18965-9_6
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