Abstract

Interest in the moral problems of medicine and health care has grown rapidly over the last three decades. The dominant conception (also called applied ethics or principalism) is characterized by application of general ethics theories and principles to various practical biomedical problems. The critiques to this conception are: lack of consensus about which principle is overriding and should be applied in the particular case; assumption, that ethical principles, theories and moral views are transcultural; inattention to the particularities of the practical settings. There is a need of alternative approach, new conception that provides more comprehensive understanding of the nature, scope, method and application of ethics in the contemporary health care context. The possible solutions are: interpretive ethics instead applied ethics, better understanding of the internal morality; analysis of external morality; development of new conception of bioethics. Bioethics is a new stage in the tradition of medicine with a need of change in the focus: from knowledge to person and values; from internal to external morality; from medical ethics to bioethics; from applied to interpretative ethics.

---

Address for correspondence: Dr. S. Alexandrova, Assistant-Professor, Chair of "Social medicine and healthcare management", Medical Institute - Pleven.