Teaching Bioethics: what are the differences - if any - between teaching bioethics and other disciplines?

Bioethics deals with complex issues of ethical concern that sometimes differ from most other science subjects.

At the same time according to Julian Willard (2015)  "Bioethics need an approach that has the merits of being both relevant to a wider nonprofessional audience and readily applicable to the circumstances in which ordinary people are called upon to make bioethical decisions"*. 


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Currently, there is an increasing relevance of the development of an "Interprofessional Education, IPE"  and, in line with this, "Bioethics" would also benefit from the promotion of interdisciplinary deliberation. 

A bioethical educational framework should contribute to developing a critical awareness of the main bioethical principles at stake, as well as tolerating uncertainty, empathy, and a pluralistic consideration of any problem.

To frame the right questions in order to find the possible answers, a relational approach would be needed that also contemplates the different contexts that do not mean unconditionally accepting cultural relativism.

Returning then to the initial question about whether teaching Bioethics differs from that which should be carried out in other disciplines, (assuming that it is a discipline but that may be the subject of another reflection),  Loretta Kopelman (2006) ** delves into this topic and describes that an "unique expertise is a necessary condition for disciplines. Using the current literature, different views about the sort of expertise that might be unique to bioethicists are critically examined to determine if there is an expertise that might meet this requirement". Rather - the author argues - "expertise in bioethics is rooted in many professions, disciplines and fields and best understood as a second-order discipline".

"One reason - mentioned by L. Kopelman - is "that the problems characterizing bioethics are too broad to be claimed by any one profession or discipline and include: euthanasia, death and dying, confidentiality, disability, patient rights, subjects’ rights, informed consent, professionalism, abortion, assisted suicide, personhood, health-care resource allocation, environmental ethics, the impact of new technologies including genetic and reproductive technologies, and consequences of pollution and plagues". 


Hope that the title that inspires this first post would be able to motivate and encourage a broad discussion. 

We invite you to share your comments and thoughts in this regard. Thanks in. advance.

*Julian Willard (2015) Structuring Bioethics Education: The Question, the Disciplines, and the Integrative Challenge, Ethics and Social Welfare, 9:3, 280-296, DOI: 10.1080/17496535.2015.1005555
** LORETTA M. KOPELMAN (2006) Bioethics as a Second-Order Discipline: Who Is Not a Bioethicist?, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 31:6, 601-628