A NEED FOR IDENTITY

Medicine cannot be practiced in closed room alone or ethics cannot merely appear on a piece of paper. 

While war crimes, illegal trials, new inventions in biological and medical technologies, debates on the allocation of limited resources, issues concerning eugenics and gene therapy - to name a few - formed the crux of bioethical concerns of First World countries, the same does not hold completely true for the rise of bioethics in India. It cannot be disputed that bioethics has come to India as an import of the West, but bioethics in India cannot be restricted or comprehended within the parameters of research ethics guidelines, ethics committees or even bioethics training courses. Unfortunately little has been done to collate a history from various movements like those in human rights, women's rights, consumers rights, public health initiatives have strongly impacted and informed the bioethics discourse in India. The experiences that have shaped healthcare in India are different from those in the West, and bioethics has to understood through these experiences, these contexts. 

Even as it includes such issues such as euthanasia, in - vitro fertilization, gene therapy, ethics in clinical trial and others, bioethics in India has to equally concern itself with questions of poverty, hunger, disease, government's skewed developmental program's, peoples need and inequalities. 

Medicine cannot be practiced in closed room alone or ethics cannot merely appear on a piece of paper. It cannot be merely regulated by ethics committees or a set of guidelines for clinicians to adhere by. It has to be related to the social, cultural and economic aspects of health and diseases. For bioethics to evolve thus, it first requires to acquire an identity of its own by consolidating the histories that have shaped the field of health in India. These histories have shaped health initiatives and concerns in India. 

This blog is an endevour to create a platform for academic learning and sharing of views on laws, regulations, guidelines and ethical principles governing health and medicine in India. 

Rimali Batra