 |
| Dr.Darryl engaging the delegates in a group activity... |
On the third day of the International Conference on 'Science, Society and Sustainability' today, Dr.Darryl R.J.Macer gave the first plenary on Bioethics. He traced the concept to human heritage thousands of years old, and defined it as the concept of love, balancing benefits and risks of choices and decisions. Although there exists various definitions for bioethics, the simplest would be consideration of the ethical issues raised by questions involving life, like:
"What food should I eat?
How is the food grown?
Where should I live and how much disturbance of nature should I make?
What relationships should I have with fellow organisms including human beings?
How do I balance the quality of my life with development of love of my life, other's lives and the community?"
Stating that we have the power to remodel whole ecosystems of the planets, he observed that, a fundamental
way of reasoning that people have when making decisions is to balance doing good against doing harm."We could group these ideals under the idea of love, though the question of benefits for whom and harm to whom is central to deciding whether an action is one of love or not."
One of the underlying philosophical ideas of society is to pursue progress. The most common justification for this is the pursuit of improved medicines and health, which is doing good. A failure to attempt to do good, is a form of doing harm, the sin of omission. This is the principle of beneficence.
Compassion has been proposed as common ground for bioethics in a Thai Buddhist context, and compassion can be considered as love as is discussed in the writings of Buddha. General compassion is focussed on a particular context in suffering whereas social justice looks at inequality. In Theravada Buddhism, the four prime virtues are mindfulness of friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity.
He quoted from great philosophers of the past to authenticate his views.
Confucius, Analects, 6th C BC.
"To love a thing means wanting it to live".
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, 1956.
"If I truly love one person, I love all persons, I love the world, I love life".
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1959.
"Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves".
Stating that there are several basic theories of bioethics, he said that, the simplest distinction that can be made is whether they focus on the action, the consequences, or the motives.
to be contd...
No comments:
Post a Comment