Common Principles and Multiculturalism

• Main Authors: Farzaneh Zahedi, Bagher Larijani
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tehran University of Medical Sciences 2009-05-01
• Series: Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine
• Subjects: Principlism; Ethical relativism; Informed consent; Truth disclosure
• Online Access: http://journals.tums.ac.ir/upload_files/pdf/13464.pdf

Judgment on rightness and wrongness of beliefs and behaviors is a main issue in bioethics. Over centuries, big philosophers and ethicists have been discussing the suitable tools to determine which act is morally sound and which one is not. Emerging the contemporary bioethics in the West has resulted in a misconception that absolute westernized principles would be appropriate tools for ethical decision making in different cultures. We will discuss this issue by introducing a clinical case. Considering various cultural beliefs around the world, though it is not logical to consider all of them ethically acceptable, we can gather on some general fundamental principles instead of going to the extremes of relativism and absolutism. Islamic teachings, according to the presented evidence in this paper, fall in with this idea.