Global bioethics and culture in a pluralistic world: How does culture influence bioethics in Africa?

Global Bioethics and Culture in a Pluralistic World: How does Culture influence Bioethics in Africa?

Bioethics principles and practice can be influenced by different cultural background. This is because the four globally accepted bioethics principles are often based on basic ethical codes such as autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice. Beneficence/nonmaleficence requires us to maximize possible benefits, while minimizing possible harms and consequently secure the well-being of other...

Bioethics between Nature and Culture

On the Viability of a Pluralistic Bioethics

In an attempt to promote in-depth dialogue amongst bioethicists coming from distinct disciplinary and religious backgrounds this thesis offers an overview of the current state of bioethics and a critical analysis of a number of the leading methods of addressing pluralism in bioethics. Exploring the critiques and methodological proposals coming from the social sciences, the contract theorists, a...

Decolonizing Bioethics in Africa

The global spread of bioethics from its North-American and European provenance to non-Western societies is currently raising some concerns. Part of the concern has to do with whether or not the exportation of bioethics in its full Western sense to developing non-Western states is an instance of ethical imperialism or bioethical neocolonialism. This paper attempts an exploration of this debate i...

Bioethics, Culture and Infanticide in Brazilian Indigenous Communities

I suspect that, among other effects, the article will produce a feeling of anachronism among readers that have accompanied the recent developments in the ethnology of South American indigenous cultures. It seems to me that this failure, certainly attributable in part to the limitations of perspective that constitute one of the prices and risks of disciplinary specialization, does not fundamenta...