Harris J
Institute of Medicine, Law and Bioethics, School of Law, University of Manchester, UK.
J Med Ethics. 2003 Oct;29(5):303-6. doi: 10.1136/jme.29.5.303.
In this paper a plea is made for an unprincipled approach to biomedical ethics, unprincipled of course just in the sense that the four principles are neither the start nor the end of the process of ethical reflection. While the four principles constitute a useful "checklist" approach to bioethics for those new to the field, and possibly for ethics committees without substantial ethical expertise approaching new problems, it is an approach which if followed by the bioethics community as a whole would, the author believes, lead to sterility and uniformity of approach of a quite mindbogglingly boring kind. Moreover, much of bioethics is not concerned with identifying the principles or values appropriate to a particular issue, but rather involves analysing the arguments that are so often already in play and which present themselves as offering solutions in one direction or another. Here, as I try to show in discussion of these four scenarios, the principles allow massive scope in interpretation and are, frankly, not wonderful as a means of detecting errors and inconsistencies in argument.
在本文中，有人呼吁对生物医学伦理学采取一种无原则的方法，当然，这里的“无原则”仅指这四项原则既不是伦理反思过程的起点也不是终点。虽然这四项原则为该领域的新手以及可能没有大量伦理专业知识来处理新问题的伦理委员会提供了一种有用的生物伦理学“清单式”方法，但作者认为，如果整个生物伦理学界都遵循这种方法，将会导致一种极其枯燥乏味的方法上的不育和统一。此外，生物伦理学的许多内容并非关注确定适用于特定问题的原则或价值观，而是涉及分析那些常常已经在起作用且声称能提供某种解决方案的论点。在此，正如我在讨论这四个案例时试图表明的那样，这些原则在解释上有很大的空间，而且坦率地说，作为检测论点中的错误和不一致性的手段并不出色。
