Abstract

VALDES, Erick. Making principlism more practical: the importance of specification in bioethics. Rev. Bioética y Derecho [online]. 2015, n.35, pp.65-78. ISSN 1886-5887.  https://dx.doi.org/10.1344/rbd2015.35.14282.

The four principles of biomedical ethics, identified and defined by Beauchamp and Childress, are used worldwide, both in the medical and biomedical field. It is understood that those theoretical guidelines are useful for analysis and resolution of intractable ethical quandaries. However, what bioethicists do when they use this approach is rather unclear. The interpretation of principlism differs between professionals, even regarding a particular case. In this fashion, what the correct application of this approach is remains in the obscurity. What are health care professionals really doing when they apply the principles? This paper examines the methodological strengths and weaknesses of this deliberative platform by concluding that a workable and proper deliberation must rest on a sound specification of general norms into particular ones. This process will lead us to narrow the too vague scope of principles and add content to them, by making principlism more practical.

Keywords : principlism; specification; applying principles; common morality.

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