Moral Principles and Ethics Committees: A Case against Bioethical Theories

Abstract

This paper argues that the function of moral education in the biomedical context should be exactly the same as in a general, philosophical framework: it should not provide ready-to-use kits of moral principles; rather, it must show the history, epistemology and conceptual structure of moral theories that would enable those who have to make decisions to be as informed and as responsible as possible. If this complexity cannot be attained, an incomplete product—i.e. bioethics or bioethical principles—should not be seen as a viable substitute. This theoretical position is subsequently illustrated by a case study involving research ethics committees. It is argued that in within these committees, that are carefully formed multidisciplinary bodies, what makes competent decision-making possible is not a bioethical theory, nor even a sound philosophical ethics, but the dynamics of the discussion of a number of experts coming from different disciplines. This multidisciplinary expertise is necessary and sufficient to undertake the challenges of complex decisions in the biomedical context.

Keywords:

• Bioethics
• metaethics
• ethics committees

Acknowledgements

I owe much to Thierry de Rochegonde with whom a part of these ideas was discussed, and to two anonymous reviewers of this journal, all of whom I thank.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ This applies to committees in France and in the UK.

² For more details, cf. Zielinska (2015).

³ Autonomy is the first of the four principles advanced by Beauchamp and Childress (2001).

⁴ By metaethics, I mean a study of meaning of moral terms and of ontology of the referents of those terms. Typical metaethical questions would be: ‘Does “good” mean “pleasant”?’ or ‘Does an evaluative proposition describe something real or nothing at all?’

⁵ Cf. McDowell (1981), Dancy (2004).

⁶ For a straightforward criticism of particularism, cf. McKeever and Ridge (2006).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme (FMSH), European Commission (Action Marie Curie program, COFUND, 7th PCRD) and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation under the Fernand Braudel-IFER scholarship, and I was able to exert it within the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg (Germany).