INTRODUCING MEDICAL ETHICS

Bioethics in India has never captured the popular imagination. Medical issues such as organ transplantation, technologically assisted issues such as organ transplantation, technologically assisted reproduction and euthanasia have now long been around, making noises and evoking debates, and sometimes effecting policy changes. For instance the case of forced narco-analysis on suspected criminals and anti-socials: in response to consistent campaigns against this form test, the Supreme Court of India, in 2010, declared the compulsory use of the test on suspects illegal. That it was up as an agenda by the NHRC (National Human Rights Commission is another matter to consider. But this is one of the many instances when an issue - at the interface of medicine and ethics has been popularly understood as an issue of human rights and not bio-ethics. 

In contract, the West has seen a burgeoning academic interest in bioethics and has witnessed an active involvement of social scientists, especially philosophers - as 'applied science' - a branch of philosophy. But, as Golay rhetorically asks, "Where is the structure [in India] that will enable the engagement between medical practice and the profession of the philosophers which is basically academic?" 

In the absence of academic orientation and the scope to grow as a discipline or a situation promoted forth by philosophical principles, how does bioethics play itself out in India? 

When asked about views of bioethics in India, one of the respondents (a social scientist) said: "Honestly, bioethics is one word is not familiar with, if you want to discuss euthanasia or related subjects, I am there for it. I don't know what bioethics really stands for." [From a new highlight interview of a social scientist who is a member of a Mumbai based Society that defends euthanasia]. His comment on knowing and doing nothing with bioethics goes a long way towards highlighting the non-visibility of bioethics in India. 

While there has been considerable public attention to issue including foetal- sex determination tests, narco-analysis and organ transplant to name a few, they have almost never been discusses as issues in medical ethics. There are no government medical ethics commission like in the US, where they have the presidential commission for study of medical ethics issues. I could suffice it to say that the presence of medical ethics in India as a field of study is fragmentary and in a nascent stage. 

Rimali Batra