New Paper on Religion and Bioethics Published Following WCB 2024 Debates
A new paper co-authored by a diverse group of 15 scholars, led by Giovanni Spitale, Federico Germani, and IBME Director Nikola Biller-Andorno, critically examines the role of religion in global bioethics. The publication follows the 2024 World Congress of Bioethics (WCB 2024) in Qatar, where heated discussions emerged over calls to more strongly incorporate religious values into bioethical discourse.
The paper analyzes the “pluriversal” framework proposed at the congress by Jecker and colleagues, which advocates for a bioethics rooted in civility, justice, and respect for cultural and religious diversity. While acknowledging its inclusive aspirations, the authors raise concerns about the framework’s ethical inconsistencies and its compatibility with pluralistic dialogue and internationally accepted human rights standards.
Through a critical exploration of how religious perspectives shape (and sometimes complicate) bioethical reasoning, the paper calls for a future of bioethics that embraces diversity while remaining anchored in shared ethical principles.
Abstract
The World Congress of Bioethics held in Qatar in 2024 (WCB 2024) sparked controversy around the role of religion in bioethics, highlighting the need for critical discussions. During the congress, there was a strong push for incorporating religious values into bioethical discourse, raising questions about the validity and implications of such an approach. This paper examines the influence of religious thought on bioethical discussions, and the ongoing debate over the role of religious perspectives in this field. Here, we explore Jecker and colleagues’ pluriversal framework, which was proposed at WCB 2024, espousing a bioethical discourse grounded in civility, respect for law, justice, non-domination, and toleration. While the framework aims to embrace the world's cultural and religious diversity, here, we suggest that it struggles with significant ethical inconsistencies, poses challenges for pluralistic dialogue, and may be hard to reconcile with human rights. Through an analysis of Jecker's principles and their application, we discuss the difficulty of integrating conflicting religious views with ethical values and with widely accepted human rights frameworks. We then proceed to examine how and why religions might exert undue influence on bioethics, and we argue for a different future for bioethics.
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