- Author
- Year
- 2013
- Title
- Bioethics in practice: Addressing ethically sensitive requests in a Dutch fertility clinic
- Journal
- Social Science & Medicine
- Volume
- 98
- Pages (from-to)
- 330-339
- Document type
- Article
- Faculty
- Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG)
- Institute
- Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR)
- Abstract
-
This article provides insight into how ethically sensitive requests for the use of assisted reproductive
technologies (ARTs) are dealt within the daily practice of a Dutch fertility clinic. The findings presented
are part of an ethnographic study conducted in this clinic from September 2003 until April 2005. Information
for this article was gathered by attending the multidisciplinary ethics meetings and conversations
with clinic staff. By looking at ‘bioethics in practice’, this article provides insight into the complex
and dynamic interplay between particular couples’ situations, contextual features, bioethical principles,
doctors’ subjective feelings and views, and the employment of medical practices. Our study suggests that
personal views to a certain extent inform the agenda of the ethics meetings, but in the end neither these
views nor bioethical principles fully determine the decisions made. Clinic staff members employ routine
medical practices with the intention to carefully resolve ethically sensitive cases. These practices include:
collegial consultation, searching for scientific evidence in the literature, obtaining more medical information,
offering medical tests, referring couples to other clinics and ensuring informed consent. Rather
than examining hypothetical cases, which evoke principles, observations of practices regarding real life
cases of which many details are known, allowed us to identify the influence of routine medical practice
on ethical decisions. Despite initial concerns from the side of the medical professionals (some of which
might be regarded as paternalistic), at the end the reproductive autonomy of most couples seeking ARTs
was not jeopardized. The format of the multidisciplinary ethics meetings seems to be promising as it
provides a space for clinic staff members to express and reflect on their subjective views and feelings of
unease regarding certain requests for ARTs, while at the same time it diminishes the risk that decision
making is (too heavily) shaped by these feelings and views. - URL
- go to publisher's site
- Language
- English
- Persistent Identifier
- https://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.386253
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