Bioethics and International Human Rights

Abstract

Increasingly, the world seems to shrink due to our ever-expanding technological and communication capacities. Correspondingly, our awareness of other cultures increases. This is especially true in the field of bioethics because the technological progress of medicine throughout the world is causing dramatic and challenging intersections with traditionally held values. Think of the use of pregnancy monitoring technologies like ultrasound to abort fetuses of the “wrong” sex in India (where a female's dowry can be a tremendous burden to the family), the sale of human organs in and between countries, or the disjunction between the haves and the have-nots in South America when it comes to bone marrow transplants, while thousands of other children die for want of fundamental goods and services like clean water, basic inoculations, and food itself.