ABSTRACT
It is of keen interest that we nd external to the debates around animal ethics discussed in the previous chapter a comparable questioning of the eld of bioethics. Recent critiques of bioethics (some from bioethicists themselves) similarly nd fault with an unreective reproduction of the liberal humanist self, abstract ethical codes insensitive to context and an overemphasis on analytic philosophy. In this chapter I experiment with the concept of a ‘critical bioethics’ that could be seen as trying to answer some of the criticisms of bioethics. In not wanting to be overambitious I am specically interested in this chapter and the next in challenging what I see as the perpetuation of culture-nature and human-animal dualism in mainstream bioethics. In attempting to dismantle this we can anticipate a bioethics that can better think through the lens of intersectionality mentioned in the previous chapter. Put simply, I want to counter an overly humanist bioethics with a broader non-anthropocentric notion of health. e idea that bioethics can be equated with human medical ethics is challenged, partly by revisiting perhaps the rst pronouncement of a ‘bioethics’, which since became derailed and largely superseded. Following the points raised previously, I argue the case for signicant overlap between entities such as ‘medical ethics’, ‘animal ethics’ and ‘environmental ethics’. is project can be said to have much in common with recent calls for a posthuman bioethics (Shildrick, 2004; Murray, 2007; Zylinska, 2009).
