Title: Modes of justification in bioethical opinion papers. How scientific societies try to govern the moral fabric of human reproduction

Autor: Michaela Scheriau

Published: 2023

Full Text available: Here

Citation:

Scheriau, M. (2023). Modes of justification in bioethical opinion papers. How scientific societies try to govern the moral fabric of human reproduction. Universität Wien.

Abstract:

Bioethical decision-making in assisted reproductive medicine is a delicate matter. To this end, this work explores how bioethical issues in reproductive medicine are negotiated, and thereby made by biomedical professionals (primarily so-called ‘ethicists’). It is designed as a comparative qualitative case study examining two international scientific societies in the field of reproductive medicine and focuses on their internal ethics committees and their work. In particular, the main research interest lies on the various modes of justification with which it is defined what an ethically (un)acceptable medical and/or research practice should mean in the context of reproductive technologies. Following an actor-network theory approach, the thesis makes the methodological move to put documents – the ethical opinion statements of these committees – center-stage and views them as integral actors of making the very notions, issue(s) and objects that are at stake. Inspired by Boltanski’s and Thévenot’s pragmatist philosophy of knowledge and work on justification, as well as by Foucault’s understanding of discourse as a practice, the thesis considers bioethics as a particular discursive formation. With a co-production perspective, it utilizes the normative discourses around reproductive technologies as a vehicle to analyze the knowledge production and power dynamics involved in this specific bioethics discourse. In this view, bioethics becomes a particular mode of governance practice and thus a phenomenon of power. Hence, this analysis is centered on aspects of governance and self-regulation of this techno-medical field. This also involves facing broader questions of how societies in general encounter new (or emerging) technologies and regulate their use, and what role and function (institutionalized) bioethics play in this. Bioethics can be seen as an additional tool in the political sphere itself which makes vivid offers, reworks problems and creates potentially attractive alternatives for political decision-making.