Carmen Cozma
Pages 130-135
DOI: 10.5840/cultura20074126
ABSTRACT
Acknowledged in the Western culture by the researches of Van Rensselaer Potter and André E. Hellegers several decades ago, bioethics registered a remarkable development, continuing to extend its inter- disciplinary field — crossing the knowledge and practice in biology, medicine, moral philosophy, theology, law, genetics, new science-tech implied in major problems that affect the entire existence (human and nonhuman) — by dealing with the human values of life, death, health, filiations, personal identity; pursuing to “understanding man, life and the future at the intersection of ethics and technologies, of sciences and cultures”. There is a wide area of concerns — and, no less, of interests, demands, expectations — covered by bioethics. There are many dilemmas and dramatic problems in its range of settings. In a global vision, we can identify a large number of #po/ that claim — among other professional standpoints — the critical ethics reflection to be approached, disentangled, comprehended and explained, to be solved finally. So, the repertory of bioethics leads toward a variety of problems, from poverty, hunger, basic health-care, environmental perplexities, abortion, HIV/AIDS, to possibilities of preservation, prolongation and improvement of life, to suicide and euthanasia, to assisted reproduction (in terms of the so-called right to “reproductive liberty”), to gene therapy, genetic manipulation, prenatal screening, sex selection, organ donations and transplants, deciding between patients, cloning, a new eugenics, including the phenomenon of the marketing and commodification of sperm and eggs, of different body ! Cf. Gilbert Hottois et Jean-Noél Missa (coord.), Nouvelle encyclopédie de bioéthigue, De Boeck Université, 2003