Principlism

This approach to ethical decision-making has been prevalently adopted in various professional fields, largely because it sidesteps complex debates in moral philosophy at the theoretical level.

[3] The approach was first advocated by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research in a document called the "Belmont Report".

[4] After four years of monthly deliberations, the Commission met in February 1976 for four days at the Smithsonian Institution's Belmont Conference Center which resulted in a statement of three basic ethical principles: autonomy, beneficence, and justice, for biomedical and behavioural research.

Whilst Beauchamp and Childress claim that these principles are commonly understood and accepted within society—and thus have a broad degree of support—they also assert that they are drawn from two normative ethical traditions: the duty-based moral philosophy (deontological approach) of Immanuel Kant; and the outcome-based (consequentialist) ethics of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

[6] This principle refers to the capacity of an individual to be self-determining and to make decisions for themselves without undue pressure, coercion or other forms of persuasion.

Rather the sufficient condition is that most individuals and societies, would agree that both prescriptively and descriptively there is wide agreement with the existence and acceptance of the general values of autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice.

The term principlism itself was first presented, not by Beauchamp and Childress, but by two of the most vocal critics, K. Danner Clouser and Bernard Gert.

[8][9] The apparent "pick and mix" selection of certain theories and principles, without an underlying theoretical basis, is a cause of great concern for Clouser who states:[10] It is a kind of relativism espoused (perhaps unwittingly) by many books (usually anthologies) of bioethics.

They each have flaws—which are always pointed out—but on balance, the authors seem to be saying, they are probably all equally good!Others have objected to the choice or limitations of the particular principles, such as Herissone-Kelly (2003), who questions the argument that Beauchamp and Childress present in support of their global applicability;[11] and Walker (2009), who believes that more principles need to be added if they are truly to represent a common sense morality.

[16][17][18] In spite of any shortcomings of the principlist approach in bioethical analysis, the perceived benefits have been significant as evidenced by its pervasive use.