The code 'downloaded' from the west cannot provide solution to all our ethical dilemmas and we have to develop our own indigenous, culturally sensitive, ecologically relevant, religiously acceptable, and above all original answer to our bio-ethical issues.
Vice-chancellor of the University of Health Sciences (UHS), Professor Malik Hussain Mubbashar stated this while addressing the inaugural session of a workshop on 'Ethics in Bio-Medical Research' here on Monday.
Dr Farhat Moazam, Professor and Chairperson Center of Biomedical Ethics and Culture, SIUT, Karachi, and Dr Aamir M Jafarey facilitated the workshop.
Mubbashar maintained that essential aspect of biomedical ethics was to protect a patient's right to receive all possible medical treatment that could improve his/her life in the context of familial and societal relationship.
"As medicine moves forward in prolonging life span and providing cure for the conditions that were at one point regarded as incurable, there is even more needed to protect an individual against the rising cost of medical treatment today," he added. He further said that major ethical issues in biomedical research and healthcare delivery included concept of health, the human nature, ethical issues in decision making, human experimentation, genetic engineering, behaviour modification, euthanasia and right to healthcare.
The major abuse of bio-ethics was now feared in genetic engineering, which can be used as a weapon of bio-terrorism. He pointed out that some of applications of modern biotechnology had raised bio-ethical issues based on technologies such as organ transplantation, selective abortion, IVF and gene screening and therapy etc.
"Muslim governments need to make investment in the education of ethics of biomedicine, founded upon Islamic theological and philosophical ethics as derived from the teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (PBUH)", he added.