Bioethics, Suffering, and the Culture Wars

Bibliographic Data

ID3474568
AuthorsJonathan B Imber (0000-0001-9532-0776, Wellesley College, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume15
Issue5
Pages622
Publication date2024-05-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel15050622
OpenAlexW4398141803
LanguageEN
References cited19

This article provides an analysis of the enduring disagreements among bioethicists over the divide between secular and religious boundaries that are reflected in liberal, libertarian, and conservative approaches to medicine as a profession and vocation. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the most authoritative voices to address the problem of suffering were Protestants, Strict Calvinists, hydropaths, and homeopaths. Other religious and medical groups had regularly confronted pain and suffering in the nineteenth century in light of the discovery and increasing use of anesthesia. Rationalizations for suffering were first and foremost indebted to strong beliefs about divine will and about the seemingly inevitable course of nature. Did physical pain reflect the wrongdoing of one individual or of an entire community? What was the appropriate way to respond to the natural circumstances of growth, decay, and healing? Such questions produced a varied rhetoric of suffering that emerged in new ways in the second half of the twentieth century. Questions and concerns about the ethical foundations of medical practice-what should and should not be permitted-illustrate the present cultural struggles

Bioethics · Engineering ethics · Environmental ethics · Political science · Sociology · Engineering · Ethics in medical practice · Law · Medicine · Patient Dignity and Privacy · Philosophy

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