A moral principle or rule about what is right and wrong when dealing with living things and medical treatments.
From bio- (life) + ethic (moral principle). Emerged as a field in 1960s-70s when new medical technologies (organ transplants, genetic engineering) forced society to ask ethical questions.
Bioethics asks the hardest questions: Is it okay to use stem cells for medicine if it involves destroying embryos? Should we edit genes? These questions didn't exist before modern biology made them possible.
Bioethics as a discipline formalized in the 1970s–80s within male-dominated medical and scientific institutions. Early frameworks often centered male physician autonomy and neglected women's bodily autonomy, reproductive ethics, and care labor; gender-blind 'universal principles' masked these gaps.
Apply bioethical frameworks with explicit attention to gendered impacts: reproductive justice, care ethics, and intersectional vulnerability. Name whose values are centered and who is silenced.
["care ethics","feminist bioethics","reproductive justice framework"]
Pioneers like Harriet Washington (medical racism), Rosalind Hursthouse (virtue ethics), and the Belmont Report critics exposed bioethics' erasure of women's and minority experiences; feminist bioethics now demands accountability.
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