Ainslie Biomedical Ethics Summary

1. Ainslie, D. C. (2003). Principlism. In Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Vol. 5, 3rd edition, pp 2099-2104.

A philosophy professor highly engaged in bioethics research and publications, Ainslie drew up a short section on Principlism discussing the Four Principles of Biomedical Ethics – Respect for Autonomy, Nonmaleficence, Beneficence and Justice. It is worthy of mention that Ainslie analyses the application and clashes of principles in situations of ethical dilemma, and presents various criticism of Beauchamp’s and Childress’s inability to organise the principles systematically in times of clashes. In addition, this article proposes suggestions in resolving principle disagreements. My paper builds itself heavily on this source, for I would be

They recognise rights as “instruments… to guarantee that individuals cannot be sacrificed to government interests or mere majority interests”. They go on to discuss the conditional overriding of individual rights (e.g. due to national security), the circumstantial correlativity between rights and obligations, and the weakness of the Rights Theory in accounting for virtues and communal good. This source is extremely crucial in framing my arguments, for my paper would base itself on the Rights Theory when raising the ethical dilemmas between individual rights and crew safety, and between individual rights and obligations of the nation and/or companies. My paper would also contrast as well as harmonise the Rights Theory to the Principles of Biomedical Ethics in the abovementioned

She discusses various physical and psychological stressors, the consequences on human health and work performance, as well as the current countermeasures to tackle the stress factors. Pertaining to my paper, I would focus on the psychological and psychosocial stressors and countermeasures. Morphew’s expertise in space psychology is backed with a Masters in Aerospace Human Factors & Engineering Psychology, making her analysis of the psychological stress factors credible. This source serves to guide my research paper, from understanding the various psychological stressors in long-duration spaceflights to working towards overcoming them with computerized therapy. Through knowing the methods currently implemented to face the psychological and psychosocial challenges, I can identify their strengths and shortcomings and use them to develop my research