Bioethical Principlism

The first edition of Beauchamp and Childress' seminal book, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, appeared in 1979. That work has been the most universally accepted statement of bioethical principles. However, its proposal has not been exempt from criticism, which has led the authors to make several modifications, redefinitions and extensions to the theoretical and methodological scope of the principles in subsequent editions. The criticisms are mainly based on what Valdes has called the problem of principlism, which could briefly be defined as the absence of one or more criteria for ranking the principles. By returning to the path of the founders of bioethics and reviewing the main milestones that influenced the emergence of the discipline, Valdes rethinks Beauchamp and Childress' principlism by describing its problems and demonstrating why the epistemological and methodological aspects of it are still insufficient to address complex cases with a real degree of objectivity and impartiality. Certainly, with this book Valdes makes a relevant contribution to rethink one of the most paradigmatic approaches to the real significance of bioethics.

Autorentext

Ph.D. He is currently working in the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University and in the Washington College of Law at American University, Washington DC, USA, where he is conducting diverse postdoctoral research in Philosophy, with concentrations in Bioethics and Biolaw. He also teaches in the School of Law at the University of Chile.

Klappentext

The first edition of Beauchamp and Childress' seminal book, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, appeared in 1979. That work has been the most universally accepted statement of bioethical principles. However, its proposal has not been exempt from criticism, which has led the authors to make several modifications, redefinitions and extensions to the theoretical and methodological scope of the principles in subsequent editions. The criticisms are mainly based on what Valdes has called "the problem of principlism," which could briefly be defined as the absence of one or more criteria for ranking the principles. By returning to the path of the founders of bioethics and reviewing the main milestones that influenced the emergence of the discipline, Valdes rethinks Beauchamp and Childress' principlism by describing its problems and demonstrating why the epistemological and methodological aspects of it are still insufficient to address complex cases with a real degree of objectivity and impartiality. Certainly, with this book Valdes makes a relevant contribution to rethink one of the most paradigmatic approaches to the real significance of bioethics.