Review article
To Treat or not to Treat (Animals): the Bioethical Problem in Veterinary Medicine
Konstanca Korenčić Kampl
; Veterinary Faculty of University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Bioethics is a specific, new scientific discipline that transdisciplinary integrates various approaches,
that arose as a result of moral problems of modern medicine. Historically and
relating to subject matter, the veterinaty medicine (profession) belongs to the field of
biomedicine, where the appearance and the role of Descartes was crucial. By applying the
limited means of rational mechanics, the idea of the »nature of the automaton« was formed
by Descartes. The biomedical model is deeply rooted in this Cartesian thought. It is necessary
to explain that the veterinaty medicine has epistemological foundations within the
biomedical model, but that its ethical position is essentially different. On a higher level of
scientific differentiation, there are two medicines: the human and the veterinaty medicine.
There are also two medical ethics: the human and the veterinaty one. The author discusses
that the veterinaty ethics has its place in the total contemplation of the re lation between
the animal and the man. Today, veterinaty medicine is faced with totally new values,
namely the awarenes that animals have rights. The question of animal rights, in the
context of responsibility of veterinary medicine, is growing in importance. The dignity and
the authority of veterinary medicine can only be preserved through a social consensus that
ought to be changed. That is, veterinaty medicine should use its biomedical, in essence
Cartesian perceptions, in accord with the new ecological paradigm and bioethical principles.
The empathy and the intellect should be combined as the heart and eye of one new
veterinaty ethics.
Keywords
bioethics; Cartesian paradigm; ecological paradigm; veterinaty medicine
Hrčak ID:
101749
URI
Publication date:
5.11.2002.
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