Accounting for Culture in a Globalized Bioethics

As we look to the future in a world with porous borders and boundaries transgressed by technologies, an inevitable question is:Can there be a single, global bioethics? Intimately intertwined with this question is a second one: How might a global bioethics account for profound - and constantly transforming - sources of cultural difference? Can a uniform, global bioethics be relevant cross-culturally? These are not simple questions, rather, a multi-dimensional answer is required. It is important to distinguish between two meanings of bioethics: the academic discipline of bioethics as opposed to bioethics as a set of (increasingly globalized) practices governing clinical care and scientific research. There is growing evidence to support the notion of a shared global understanding of bioethics as a field of inquiry focused on the moral dimensions of science and biomedicine.