WHAT KIND OF UNIVERSALITY FOR BIOETHICS?

Abstract

Bioethics is sometimes presented as a series of universal guidelines aimed at regulating health care practices and research on human beings. Such a presentation, however, does not hold water in the face of the history of the discipline. Bioethics was born in the ideological context that prevailed in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Should we then abandon all hope of universality for ethical benchmarks that have proven their usefulness in illuminating health practices? By carefully distinguishing the universal from the uniform, this contribution shows, based on the work of G. Tangwa, that it is possible to respect the specificities of cultures around the world, while maintaining a universal aim for bioethics.