Ethical concerns at the beginning of life include abortion, severely defective newborns, fetal tissue experimentation and transplantation, genetic counseling and genetic manipulation, and surrogate motherhood. In this era of cost containment, some people are concerned about individual access to services and suspicious of clinical decisions made by for-profit managed care organizations. 4 Future ethical dilemmas will involve the decoding of genes responsible for specific diseases or traits, gene therapy, and the potential for genetic engineering. Family history and personal health risks already tell us a lot about how likely people are to get particular diseases, and in the near future, people will have much more information about their genetic predisposition to specific diseases. Bioethicists are debating whether genetic information is the property or concern of individuals or is a shared concern of insurers, employers, and society.
Ethical decisions are inherent in the daily practices of registered nurses.
6 Several notable studies have been conducted in recent years about nurses and ethical practice. Other studies document areas in which nursing needs to strengthen its role in ethical practice. A recent study suggests that nurses have a relatively low level of ethical sensitivity to issues other than patient autonomy. The study found that approximately 25 percent of a sample of nurses failed to define or defined incorrectly the term ethical dilemma. Of those who did define it correctly, only 40 percent used a conceptual definition.