ABSTRACT
Ben A. Minteer and James P. Collins argue that the ethical questions that develop in areas of ecological research and biodiversity management call for bringing ethicists, scientists, and biodiversity managers together in a collaborative effort to study and inform the methods of ethical analysis and problem solving in these fields. They present some cases to illustrate the kinds of ethical questions generated by practicing scientists and managers and call for an extensive case database and a new ethical framework they call ‘ecological ethics.’ [. . .]
Introduction When they confront difficult ethical questions in their work, biomedical scientists and clinicians can turn to bioethics, a recognized field within applied philosophy with a rich literature, for scholarly insight and practical guidance. Bioethics has a strong institutional presence in hospitals and research centers; scientists and clinicians often can and sometimes must consult directly with ethics committees or qualified bioethical personnel in their home institutions. Bioethics is embedded within these research and clinical communities, providing a recognized forum for the discussion of ethical issues, an established scholarly area of research yielding new research findings, and a support network to assist researchers and clinicians in making practical ethical decisions.
