Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Each of these judgments expresses an evaluation; that is, it conveys a negative or positive
attitude toward some state of affairs. Each, therefore, is intended to play an action-guiding
function.
Arriving at moral judgments, however, requires knowledge of valid moral standards in
our society. Nevertheless, how is such knowledge obtained? The efforts to answer this
question lie in two competing schools of thought that currently dominate normative ethical
theory:
a form of nonconsequen-
tialism. Consequentialism holds that the morally right action is always the one among the
available options that has the best consequences. An important implication of consequen-
tialism is that no specific actions or courses of conduct are automatically ruled out as
immoral or ruled in as morally obligatory. The rightness or wrongness of an action is
wholly contingent upon its effects.
According to utilitarianism, there are two steps to determining what ought to be done in
any situation. First, determine which courses of action are open. Second, determine the con-
sequences of each alternative. When this has been accomplished, the morally right course of
action is the one that maximizes pleasure, minimizes pain, or both—the one that does the
“greatest good for the greatest number.” Because the central motivation driving the design,
development, and use of medical devices is improvement of medicine's capacity to protect
and restore health, an obvious virtue of utilitarianism is that it assesses medical technology
in terms of what many believe makes health valuable: the attainment of well-being and the
avoidance of pain.
Utilitarianism, therefore, advocates that the end justifies the means. As long as any form
of treatment maximizes good consequences, it should be used. Many people, though,
believe that the end does not always justify the means and that individuals have rights that
are not to be violated no matter how good the consequences might be.
In opposition to utilitarianism stands the school of normative ethical thought known as
nonconsequentialism
utilitarianism,
a form of consequentialism, and
Kantianism,
. Proponents of this school deny that moral evaluation is simply and
wholly a matter of determining the consequences of human conduct. They agree that other
considerations are relevant to moral assessment and so reject the view that morally right
conduct is whatever has the best consequences. Based largely on the views of Immanuel
Kant, this ethical school of thought insists that there is something uniquely precious about
human beings from the moral point of view. According to Kant's theory, humans have
certain “rights” that do not apply to any other animal. For example, the moral judgments
that we should not kill and eat one another for food or hunt one another for sport or exper-
iment on one another for medical science are all based on this view of human rights.
Humans are, in short, owed a special kind of respect simply because they are people.
These two philosophies may be extended to apply to animal testing in scientific research as
well. On the utilitarianism side of the argument for animal experimentation, the health care
advancements for humans made possible through animal research far outweigh the majority
of arguments against the practice. In contrast, nonconsequentialism would state that maltreat-
ment of innocent and unprotected living beings is morally unjust and as such is an inappro-
priate means to the ends of better health care for people. Ultimately researchers must decide
for themselves, based on their own beliefs and reasoning, which philosophy wins out.
In terms of human experimentation, to better understand the Kantian perspective, it may
be helpful to recognize that Kant's views are an attempt to capture in secular form a basic
