UT Southwestern's Ethics Grand Rounds: Exploring the False Dichotomy of Secular and Religious Approaches to Bioethics

Speaker: Michael McCarthy, Ph.D., HEC-C

Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director for Healthcare Mission Leadership in the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Healthcare Leadership at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine

Abstract: The move towards a clearer separation between religious and secular bioethics works against the interdiscipinary and pluralistic context in which bioethics itself originated. This presentation explores the origins of bioethics and describes bioethical issues that led to a divergence of secular and religious approaches. Rather than maintain separate approaches to bioethics, I propose a dialogical approach. This approach does not aim to convert a secular thinker to religious thinking but creates opportunities to come to a deeper understanding of the position of the other, oneself, and the complex bioethical challenges that confront us both inside and outside the clinical space. Bioethics is a social ethic and needs complex thinking from a variety of appproaches that reach beyond a secular and religious divide.

CME

This activity has been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™ (including medical ethics and/or professional responsibility).

NCPD 

UT Southwestern Medical Center is accredited as a provider of nursing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.

This activity has been awarded 1.0 credit hour.

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Ruth Vinciguerra | Email