Dogmatics, Empirics, and Moral Medicine

Abstract

to simplify the innately complex, to clarify that which is inherently obscure, and to have a handy-dandy methodology that will unfailingly generate the product clinicians seem so ardently to seek, the Right Answer. But it is not, of course, only the unreasonable expectations of doctors that lead to disappointment It is also the extent to which bioethics as a discipline doesn't seem to be in possession of the realities of practice. Bioethicists tend to leave the facts of clinical medicine to the doctors; their task is then to apply elegant and compelling arguments drawn from first principles of ethics-such as autonomy or justice-to these undisputed and indisputable facts. Unfortunately, when the relationship between clinical medicine and bioethics is conceived along either of these models, the result is a very sterile discourse. Commentators who would settle the abortion