Intervention bioethics: A proposal for peripheral countries in a context of power and injustice

Abstract

The bioethics of the so-called 'peripheral countries' must preferably be concerned with persistent situations, that is, with those problems that are still happening, but should not happen anymore in the 21st century. Resulting conflicts cannot be exclusively analysed based on ethical (or bioethical) theories derived from 'central countries.' The authors warn of the growing lack of political analysis of moral conflicts and of human indignation. The indiscriminate utilisation of the bioethics justification as a neutral methodological tool softens and even cancels out the seriousness of several problems, even those that might result in the most profound social distortions. The current study takes as a theoretical reference the fact that natural resources (which all of us are) are finite, and that corporeal, pleasurable and painful matters (which affect us all) are relevant. Based on these premises, and on the concept that equity means 'treating unevenly the unequal', a proposal of a hard bioethics (or intervention bioethics) is introduced, in defence of the historical interests and rights of economically and socially excluded populations that are separated from the international developmental process.