Abstract
The four principles of biomedical ethics are widely used in the world for bioethical deliberation. These theoretical guides are useful for the analysis and resolution of particularly complex ethical controversies arising in clinical and biomedical fields. This chapter develops an analysis of the basic universal principles , the common universal morality , and some characteristics of each principle. Then it discusses some problems posed by critics who have provided alternative frameworks of principles that are nonuniversal. Finally, it shows how universal moral principles are connected to human rights , how rules and rights are specified to become detailed and practical for certain moralities, and how these ideas are connected with problems of justification in bioethics and biolaw .
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Notes
- 1.
This term was coined by Danner Clouser and Bernard Gert.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Rendtorff and Kemp write that “Generally, autonomy as a notion is an ideal, referring to the full self-control of the individual…. [It is an] ideal of the free and autonomous individual who can decide his or her own life .”
- 5.
See, for example, Council of Europe , “Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom ,” as amended by Protocol No. 11, Article 4, accessed November 12, 2008; Miers (2003), and United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights , Fact Sheet No.14, “Contemporary Forms of Slavery,” http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu6/2/fs14.htm, accessed 5 Feb. 2015.
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Beauchamp, T.L. (2019). A Defense of Universal Principles in Biomedical Ethics. In: Valdés, E., Lecaros, J. (eds) Biolaw and Policy in the Twenty-First Century. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 78. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05903-3_1
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