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| "Ethical Analysis of Group and Community Rights: Case Study Review of the "Collaborative Initiative for Research Ethics in Environmental Health."" |
| by: Ernest Wallwork, Syracuse University (2002) |
| Published on: 11/15/2002 |
From the outset, the culture of American research ethics, like American society as a whole, has been individualistic. Individualism narrows the broad concerns of traditional ethics to the immediate problems of isolated individuals, often cutting the individual off from others, as well as from the history of the communities—local, regional, national, international—to which he/she belongs. The language of individualism finds moral expression in utilitarian cost-benefit calculations based on aggregating individual preferences, and in the Kantian-based respect for the autonomous decision-maker that dominates contemporary bioethics, including research ethics. These individualistic ethical orientations are impoverished vehicles for ethical deliberation, because they focus on persons apart from the social traditions, institutions, roles, shared goals and environments, natural and social, without which human beings can neither survive nor flourish. By focusing the moral agent on costs or payoffs to individuals (or aggregates of individuals), apart from their communities and environments, individualistic ethics diverts attention from thinking morally about the traditions that inform agents and about the complex problems of groups seen in light of their stories, experiences, and aspirations. |
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