Clinical Bioethics

Abstract

Only recently, and in smaller proportions than the academic literature produced in research ethics, clinical bioethics has begun to elaborate the meaning of the concept of vulnerability in its disciplinary area, such as ethical problems in the physician-patient relationship, confidentiality, communication, genetic manipulation, etc. This chapter is dedicated to some of these issues. Clinical bioethics deals with the individual person, his or her biographical narrative, and the ethical decisions he or she must make regarding his or her life, health, illness, fertility, death, etc. If in research ethics we refer to subjects/objects of research, and to groups or populations under investigation in theory, clinical bioethics is always a concrete activity focused on the individual. This is why in this chapter the phenomenology of the ill human being, or the political dimension of Ethics of Care is undertaken, giving greater theoretical support to applied bioethical ethics.