BIOETHICS AS A TRANSDISCIPLINE

Soenarto Sastrowijoto
Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities FK UGM
Yogyakarta, September 2015
• What is ethics
• What is bioethics

OBJECTIVE of the course (UNESCO, 2008)

– Students should be able to indentify ethical issues in
medicine, health care and life science.
– Students should be able to provide rational
justification for ethical decisions.
– Students should be able to apply the ethical principles
of the universal declaration of bioethics and human right
What is ethics?
– Unique feature of the human being
– Influenced by cultural factors: history, tradition,
education, religions belief etc.
– Human complexity analysis, as a goal of the discipline
called Ethics: to explore the nature of moral experience
its universality and diversity

Ethics is the study of disposition, character, or attitude of a

person, group of people or culture, and ways of
promoting and perfecting it
Bioethics?
Objective
– Students should be able to explain the difference
between medical ethics and bioethics.
– Students should be able to differentiate bioethics, law,
culture, and religions
– Students should be able to explain the principles of
bioethics and how to balance these principles in
practice.
I. The Birth of Bioethics
• Bioethics has mushroomed into subdiscipline of ethics in the
past decade
• Fritz Jahr (1927), dengan karyanya: “Bioethics: Eine Unischan
Uber die ethichen beziehunen des menzen zu tier und planze”
• Van Rensseler Potter (Biochemist), 1970 – concieved as a new
discipline “bridge” between ‘fact’ dan ‘values’
• Bios and ethos – refering to – values and duties
• The field of bioethics is a wide as the fact of life, many branches,
eg. – ecological and environmental bioethics
– medical bioethics
– clinical bioethics
• In general of bioethics: not all that technically possible is
morally right – eg?
II. Principles of Bioethcs
In the implementation of bioethics
UNESCO – Universal declaration of bioethics and human rights:
1. Human dignity and human right
2. Benefit and harm
3. Autonomy and individual responsibility
4. Consent
5. Person without the capacity to consent
6. Respect for human vulnerability and personal integrity
7. Privacy and confidentiallity
8. Equality, justice and equity
9. Non discriminations non stigmatization
10. Respect for cultural diversity and pluralism
11. Solidarity and cooperation
12. Social responsibility and health
13. Sharing of benefits
14. Protecting future generation
15. Protection of environmental, the biosphere and biodiversity
III. Health and Disease Values
1. Health and disease – life and death.
Health and life are valued. Disease and death are
disvalued.
Disease is a scientific fact, fact in physics or in chemistry.
2. We think that health as positive and good disease as
negative and evil. Values are important in the concept of
health and disease.

IV. Ethics Committee

V. Medical Professionalism
• The most common issues of transdisciplinary attitute of us,
member or Indonesian Medical Association?
Mono, Multi, Inter, Transdisciplines (Nicolescu B, 1999)

1).

Mono Multi Inter Trans

2) Monodisciplinary Research Used ONE methods

Multidisciplinary
Interdisciplinary
Transdisciplinary
Used the same/ ONE methods
between the disciplines
Transfer the method to the other
discipline
At once the discipline accross the
different discipline and beyond all
discipline
• Bioethics (Medical)
Is a study of transdisciplinary subjects of philosopohy,
medicine, health, psichology, anthropology, sociology,
economics, politics, law, religions, culture, art,
language, etc, and is a study of human behavior to
have a new tolerance on transdisciplinary attitude
(Sastrowijoto, 2014)

• Bioethics and professionalism in medical care, education,

and research for the 21st Century/ future.
• Potter (1971)
Bioethics is a new discipline which combined biological
knowledge and human values system bridge between the
science and the humanities to survive and sustain, and
improve the civilized world.

• Callahan (2004)
Bioethics is a study of interdisciplinary subjects of biology,
medicine, health, ethics, philosophy, law, sociology,
economics, politics, anthropology, culture, religion, art, and
language, and is studying human behavior.