Report on the National Dialogue on Bioethics

Abstract

The week-end dialogue, as it considered and deliberated on the responsibilities and norms for those involved in health care in Malta, soon made the participants aware that new discoveries in life sciences, most especially in the area of biology and medicine as well as in psychiatry and psychology, can radically change human life as we know it. Recent advances suggest that we are rapidly acquiring the power to modify and control the capacities and activities of men by direct intervention and manipulation of their bodies and minds. Thus it was observed for instance, that in the area of fetology there has been a wide liberalization of new techniques of in vitro fertilization. The basic dilemma in the new biology is that now the engineer can be engineered. This potential for self-replication is presenting a variety of personal and social ethical problems. It is becoming obvious that life is no longer accepted, but positively assumed and often willfully destroyed. Consequently, both as individuals and as a society, our value systems are being challenged as new knowledge on medical and life-support techniques, biological phenomena and applied psychology, advances at break-neck speed.