Biomedical Ethics

Chapter 9 addresses the duties of medical practitioners such as doctors and nurses, mostly in relation to patients, but also in respect of each other and their society. It argues that the relational moral theory is at least no worse than, and is often to be preferred over, more Western principles when it comes to how to understand several biomedical obligations. For example, the chapter maintains that the communal ethic makes good sense of whom a medical professional has moral reason to treat and for which purposes. It further contends that rightness as friendliness grounds moderate positions on abortion and euthanasia that many will find convincing but that utilitarianism and Kantianism have difficulty entailing and explaining. For example, if utilitarianism and Kantianism permit abortion, it is hard for them to avoid also permitting infanticide, but the relational ethic can more easily avoid that implication.