Bioethical Issues In Concussion

Bioethical issues are ever-present. However, it is not until one opens their eyes that one can see how these issues impact the way we make decisions and understand life. In the first essay of this course, students were asked to identify central bioethics themes present in the film Concussion. Initially, I identified three main themes that highlight bioethical issues within the film. The first theme was organization v. individuals, which represented the National Football league’s monetary interest in looking out for itself, instead of protecting the overall health and safety of its athletes. The second, was majority opinion. This symbolized that just because a statement is held to be true by most, that does make that statement correct. The last …show more content…
Bailes conflict of interest is narrative ethics. A narrative ethics approach would not rely on ethical theories to answer the issue of conflict of issue. Rather, a narrative approach would try to understand how the conflict of interest came to be and “explore the best way to move forward” (Martha Montell). Using a mattering map and carefully listening to Dr. Bailes, one can ascertain from his point of view, who are the people at the center of the story and what are the main events that lead to the conflict of interest. While the film is told from the point-of-view of neuropathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu, it is clear that Dr. Bailes’ conflict of interest was resolved when he stopped working as the team physician for the Pittsburg …show more content…
For this reason, the pluralistic approach is best suited to analyze this bioethics issue. While I argue for the pluralistic approach, it is important to state that I may have chosen a different approach if I analyzed a different bioethics issue (e.g. the scope of the doctor-patient relationship). What led me to this conclusion is my former statement. More specifically, there is not a single theory that has all of the answers to answer moral problems. Deontology focuses on actions, utilitarianism focuses on consequences and narrative ethics focuses on attending to an individual’s voice (and sometimes multiple individuals). Furthermore, sometimes rules are wrong. An action is not always right because it produces a good outcome and just because an action cannot be universalized does make that action right. While pluralism is not without its own flaws, pluralism as a theory acknowledges the complexity of bioethics issues and uses creative insight and reason to come to a moral conclusion. However, I anticipate that some people may argue that pluralism does not provide real guidance on determining what kind of actions are right and which actions are wrong. My response is that the criticism is true, but just as virtue ethics focuses on what sort of person to be instead of what sort of actions are