Gentechnik und Gemeinwohl

TL;DRAbstract

The chief moral justification for investment in genetic technologies is on the basis of their medical benefit to humanity. However, the humanitarian goal of medicine has come to play a less prominent role in the bioethical literature and medical codes over the course of the twentieth-century. Instead, the promotion of benefit is more frequently discussed in the context of a physician’s duty of beneficence to his or her patient. This study argues that the economic and social questions that emerge in ethical discussions of genetics are inadequately served by the more restrictive language of beneficence. The concept of the common good (or public welfare) offers a more versatile means to discuss the social questions that genetics poses.

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