History
Although utilitarian philosophy traces itself back to the nineteenth century British thinkers John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, the application of these principles to contemporary bioethics originated in the work of Peter Singer in the 1970s and 1980s. A second generation of utilitarian bioethicists, including Julian Savulescu, Jacob M. Appel and Thaddeus Mason Pope, advanced these arguments further in the 1990s and 2000s. Among applications of the utilitarian bioethic in policy are the Groningen Protocol in the Netherlands and the Advance Directives Act in the American state of Texas.
In the 1990s, a backlash against utilitarian bioethics emerged, led by such figures as Wesley J. Smith and novelist Dean Koontz.
Read more about this topic: Utilitarian Bioethics
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)