'Miracle in Iowa': metaphor, analogy, and anachronism in the history of bioethics.
The term 'bioethics' is commonly associated with debates prompted by innovations in medical technology, yet the issues raised by bioethics are not that new. They concern the extent to which medicine and social morality exist in harmony or opposition--issues routinely addressed in the social history of medicine. This paper will argue that historical thinking, understood broadly, has a significant role to play in understanding relations between medicine and social morality, and therefore in contemporary bioethics. It explores past and present uses of metaphor and analogy in shaping perceptions of scientific innovation, and argues for the validity of apparently anachronistic thinking in our judgments of the past. The aims of this paper are ultimately pedagogical: to enable students to look at media reports about developments in medicine and biotechnology in order to problematise what are presented as the self-evident terms of current debate.
Ferber
D S
DS
School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland, Australia.
D001675:Bioethics / Q000266:history*; D006666:History of Medicine; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D019365:Metaphor; D010686:Philosophy, Medical