From medically assisted procreation to euthanasia: a modern way to deal with ethical dilemmas in modern medicine.

Abstract

AbstractSince neither moralists nor jurists have been able to cope with the philosophical questions raised by the technological advances and changing attitudes in health care, a new social structure was created in the seventies known as bioethics. Since then, bioethics has been predominantly used as a new process to express moral rules and repress social evolutions in extremely sensitive fields in society such as assisted procreation techniques and new family planning, sexual abuse of children and sexual liberation, palliative care, euthanasia and quality of life and death.Using examples at the extremities of life (in vitro fertilisation and euthanasia) it will be demonstrated that no single approach to bioethics exists which is often confused with the concept of morals or laws. Bioethics is by essence conflictual and must be used to analyse and understand how the social evolution interacts with the technological advances.A position supported by principles of equality of access, and the respect of autonom...