ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on one part of the paradox: the antagonism. One might be inclined to explain the from the different interests of scientists on the one hand and ethicists on the other. Ethics is a philosophical discipline. Ethicists often feel urged or forced, so it seems, to evaluate a specific event or conduct or development as e.g. the technology of in vitro fertilisation. An interdisciplinary collaboration of scientists and ethicists should therefore not been confined within the limits of the problems as they are defined by science or technology. The importance of a multidisciplinary or even interdisciplinary approach will be stressed; in biomedical ethics that means especially the collaboration between biomedical scientists, medical practicians and ethicists. When all collaborators take their own perspective and their own responsibility, this might complicate the interdisciplinarity but it will reduce the danger of a fruitless antagonism.