Procedural Bioethics and Content or Substantive Bioethics

Year 2018, Volume: 29 Issue: 2, 417 - 424, 06.12.2018

Salvador Ribas

Abstract

Daniel Buchanan argued that bioethics has three main functions: identifying and defining

existing ethical conflicts; providing systems or methods to think about new emerging ethical

conflicts in the field of medicine; and helping scientists and physicians to make decisions1. More

than 45 years after Buchanan´s article was published, the existence in hospitals of mechanisms

such as healthcare ethics committees, institutional review boards for clinical research, and

the increase in standard operating procedures, plans, and manuals for clinical research has

increased significantly. In other words, there is a greater interest and demand for procedures,

leaving aside questions related to the content and moral foundation of the decisions.

Keywords

Procedural Bioethics, Substantive Bioethics

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