VOlUME 04 ISSUE 05 MAY 2021
1Peter Takov, PhD , 2Ngoran Mathew Banlanjo, PhD
1,2Catholic University of Cameroon
Google Scholar Download Pdf
ABSTRACT
Contemporary debates on bioethical issues have tended to remain generally inconclusive and this is due in part to the fact that these issues are differentially perceived and interpreted across different indigenous cultural and ethical worldviews. These issues are cross-culturally evaluated using culture specific normative parameters and therefore reflect values that are culturally relative and diverse. These debates often portray stark disagreements between views that advocate for divergent or contradictory positions on central bioethical issues. This article, while contemplating the present and projected advances in genetic and reproductive technologies that soar beyond the traditional medical goals of healing disease and relieving suffering - coupled with the many negative consequences therein contained, attempts to give an African touch to the debates by rethinking them through the parameters of African indigenous cultural norms and values.
This article employs the comparative approach to explain disagreements between western philosophical anthropologies and African philosophical anthropologies, differences that account for their divergent approaches to bioethical issues and their differential understandings of how human dignity can be respected and preserved. Western Moral Philosophy is driven by the attempt to sharply distinguish persons from the rest of the cosmos, and then to identify the ways in which they must be treated; on the contrary, the traditional African approach is different, a difference which stems from her very conception of the human person and how he or she relates with the environment. In an age in which we have become dangerously separated from our bodies - human nature itself lying on the operating table - ready for changes to be enacted upon , for eugenic and neuro-psychic enhancement in Africa, we argue for the African world’s understanding of man which opens man to who he really is, man as a corporate being in the world, with social responsibility towards others and towards the world.
According to James Nelson, the job of bioethics is to assess in what respects prevailing or proposed health care policies, practices and institutions are morally defensible. As such, health care, the major object of bioethics’ study, requests that good moral reasoning should revolve around four main components namely, accurate empirical beliefs, defensible moral values, clarity about relevant concepts and finally, formally valid argumentation. The consequences are obvious: a more controlled and dignifying way of handling human beings in the arena of experimentation and a stronger belief in the fact that the human being also transcends the categories of time and space and is not merely a thing that can be tampered with.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1) A. VARGA, The Main Issues in Bioethics (Revised), Paulist Press, New York 1980
2) BONGCAE Roque (Ed.), Lumina, Holy Name University Press: Tagbilaran City 2010
3) DUNN P., DUNN Patrick, Ethics for Doctors, Nurses and Patients, Alba House, New York.
4) E. IMAFIDON, “The Concept of Person in an African Culture and its Implication For Social Order” in Lumina 2 (2010), 5.
5) E. ODUWOLE, “Personhood and Abortion: An African Perspective” in Lumina 2 (2010)
6) E. PELLEGRINO, Human Dignity and Bioethics, The President’s Council on Bioethics, Washington, D. C. 2008
7) F. STENN, “A Plea for Voluntary Euthanasia” in New England Journal Medicine, 9 (1980)
8) G. IGWEBUIKE, “The Universal and the Particular in Wiredu’s Philosophy of HumanNature,” in O. OLADIPO (ed), The Third Way in African Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Kwasi Wiredu, Hope Publications Ltd., Ibadon 2002
9) G. SOGOLO, Foundations of African Philosophy: A Definitive Analysis of ConceptualIssues in African Thought, Ibadan University Press, Ibadan 1993
10) G. TANGWA, “Some African Reflections on Biomedical and Environmental Ethics” in K. WIREDU (ed.), A Companion to African Philosophy, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford 2005, 387 – 395.
11) G. TANGWA, “The traditional African Perception of a Person: Some Implications for Bioethics.” The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 30, No. 5, 2000, 39-43.
12) G. TANGWA, “Genetic Information: Questions and Worries from an African Background,” in A. THOMPSON_R. CHADWICK(ed.), Genetic Information, Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York 1999.
13) L.MAGESA, African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life, Orbis Books, New York 2002.
14) J. AYOTUNDE, “Ethics and Morality in Yoruba Culture,” in K. WIREDU (ed.), A Companion to African Philosophy, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford 2004.
15) J. S. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion, East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi 1991.
16) J. MBITI, African Religions and Philosophy, Heinemann, London 1969.
17) J. OMOREGBE, Knowiing Pholosophy: A General Introduction, Joja Educational
a. Research and Publishers, Lagos 2003, 22-23
18) L. KASS, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics, Encounter Books, San Francisco 2002.
19) M. MAWERE, “The Shona Conception of Euthanasia: A Quest to Depart from Zimbabwe Tradition” in The Journal of Pan African Studies, Vol. 3, No. 4 (2009)
20) M. NKAFU, African Vitalogy, Paulines Publications Africa, Nairobi 1999.
21) O. OLADIPO, The Third Way in African Philosophy, Hope Publications, Ibadan 2002.
22) P. SINGER, Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press, New York 1990, 124-125.
23) S. HUNTINGTON, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York 1996
24) T. ENGELHARDT, The Foundations of Bioethics, Oxford University Press, New York 1996
25) T. MBUY, The Faith of Our Fathers: New Perspectives in the Study and Understanding of African Traditional Religion, Archdiocesan Information Service, Bamenda 2012
26) T. SHANNON, “Thematic Ethical Issues,” in T. SHANNON (ed.), Bioethics, Paulist Press, New Jersey 1976