Bioethics and Healthcare Reform: A Whig Response to Weak Consensus

Abstract

Contemporary bioethics begins with the perception that medical values are a matter of public, rather than merely professional, interest. Such was the message of delegates in Helsinki and of the New Jersey court that decided for Quinlan. It is a theme that lurks within almost every major bioethical treatise since the first edition of Principles of Bioethics. This perception also undergirds the increasingly popular suggestion that moral authority in the patient-physician relationship resides neither in the medical profession, nor in the singular will of the patient, but in moral communities that link both parties with higher social orders.