ABSTRACT
Bioethics is a rapidly expanding and changing field, which involves practitioners from a range of disciplines and concerns issues that involve people from widely different walks of life. This confluence of different perspectives and approaches is complicated further by the globalisation of bioethics, which is opening up the field to voices from traditions other than the predominant Anglo-American approach. The challenge for bioethics is to respond to this diversity in constructive and creative ways. The precise nature of this challenge depends, however, on how one understands the goal of bioethics. If the task is to reach consensus on questions concerning the rightness of certain proposed courses of action, then the diversity of perspectives in modern bioethics will seem to be a threat. But, although enabling people to reach consensus on practical matters is a necessary and important part of the discipline, it is only one part. Bioethical enquiry is also a matter of understanding and appreciating insights in the world views of others, with a view to improving one’s own. Seen through the prism of this broader ambition, the diversity of views in bioethics presents itself not as a challenge to be overcome but rather as an opportunity to be embraced.
For an overview of the history of bioethics, see Alastair V. Campbell, Bioethics: The Basics (London: Routledge 2013) ch 1.
