Principlism's Colonial Ties

• Author / Creator

  Smith, Eric NF

•    Since the establishment of modern bioethics in standardized medicine in the mid-late 20th
  

  century, the paradigm of Principlism has dominated its teleological landscape. This dominance is largely attributable to the success of the book, Principles of Biomedical Ethics. The multi-faceted nature of the titular principles defined within effectively describe, advise against, and adapt to a wide variety of ethical issues in medicine. However, these principles are not without flaw.
  This work will demonstrate that Principlism fails to adequately address its relation to and continuation of colonialism in clinical healthcare. More specifically, I argue that the Principlist paradigm is foundationally entangled with colonial thought – a mindset that permits the health- based oppression of Indigenous persons in countries such as Canada under the appearance of “ethical” conduct. This entanglement will be illustrated by presenting the core arguments of Principles of Biomedical Ethics against a backdrop of colonial wrongdoings involving medicine and Indigenous persons. The discord between these wrongdoings and the paradigm’s espoused righteousness reveal that Principlism avoids anti-colonial ideas about persons’ moral considerability – among other things – while also minimizing the importance of persons’ existence as communal and interrelated beings.
  The project concludes that these inadequacies can be improved upon by reconstructing the existing edifice of Principlist thought. This reconstruction has two facets: 1) presenting the existing core principles as virtue-based rules to better express an active obligation towards morally sound healthcare, and 2) adding a fifth, hitherto underappreciated, virtue rule about humility to the paradigm. Altogether, these revisions create a more robust paradigm that can approach and encourage anti-colonial healthcare. I do not suggest that the arguments presented here will definitively decolonize healthcare; this is but a step in that direction.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Indigenous
  • Bioethics
  • Colonialism
  • Decolonization
  • Anti-colonialism
  • Principlism
  • Virtue
  • Rules
  • Healthcare

• Graduation date

  Fall 2023

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-5kvq-w068

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.