Global bioethics – myth or reality?

Søren Holm,Bryn Williams-Jones

doi:10.1186/1472-6939-7-10

Søren Holm, Bryn Williams-Jones

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-7-10

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Abstract

BackgroundThere has been debate on whether a global or unified field of bioethics exists. If bioethics is a unified global field, or at the very least a closely shared way of thinking, then we should expect bioethicists to behave the same way in their academic activities anywhere in the world. This paper investigates whether there is a 'global bioethics' in the sense of a unified academic community.MethodsTo address this question, we study the web-linking patterns of bioethics institutions, the citation patterns of bioethics papers and the buying patterns of bioethics books.ResultsAll three analyses indicate that there are geographical and institutional differences in the academic behavior of bioethicists and bioethics institutions.ConclusionThese exploratory studies support the position that there is no unified global field of bioethics. This is a problem if the only reason is parochialism. But these regional differences are probably of less concern if one notices that bioethics comes in many not always mutually understandable dialects.

Highlights

There has been debate on whether a global or unified field of bioethics exists
Because of our own linguisticabilities, we have restricted our research to English language bioethics; because of our disciplinary backgrounds, we have focused on medical ethics, which we understand as an ethical analysis directed primarily at those issues arising in the medical context; and because of our academic training, we have employed research tools amenable to those not trained in the social sciences
The web-linking patterns of bioethics institutions A web-presence is an increasingly important feature of the communications strategy of bioethics organizations, whether they be academic, official, or non-governmental. Most of these websites link to other sites and we would not claim that all decisions about who to link to are made after long and detailed consideration, there is no doubt that web-linking is not random [39,40]

Summary

Introduction

There has been debate on whether a global or unified field of bioethics exists. If bioethics is a unified global field, or at the very least a closely shared way of thinking, we should expect bioethicists to behave the same way in their academic activities anywhere in the world. This paper investigates whether there is a 'global bioethics' in the sense of a unified academic community. For a third group, which will be the focus of our analysis, it has been a statement of final achievement, that bioethics has become a global field of inquiry. We are clearly not the first to question whether there really is such a thing as a global or unified field of bioethics. Following the publication of David Rothman's seminal (page number not for citation purposes)

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