WHAT KIND OF UNIVERSALITY FOR BIOETHICS?

Abstract

Bioethics is sometimes presented as a set of universal guidelines to regulate health care practices and human research. However, the history of the discipline does not support such a narrative. 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 paper shows, that it is possible to respect the specificities of cultures around the world, while maintaining a universal goal for bioethics.