ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we saw how the task of working out what we ought to do in face of the numerous dilemmas in bioethics seems to lie at least partly with moral philosophy in its specification of moral theories. Now we must look at the range of these theories and try to see how adequate they are to this task. To bring the various theories to life, I want you to imagine yourself faced with a moral dilemma, a situation in which you have to make a very difficult moral choice and it is hard to know which ‘horn’ of the dilemma is the better one to opt for. The situation I describe is imaginary, but it is based on the kind of actual choices which some people have had to face, especially in situations of war or other violent conflicts. I am using this imaginary scenario, rather than an actual case drawn from bioethics, so that we can see the general features of moral theories before discussing how they might apply in medicine and science.
