Bioethics Issues in Arab Society

Recent bioethical issues that have emerged in the field of medicine include, but are not limited to, eugenics (artificial insemination), palliative care (end of life care), euthanasia (medical resuscitation), abortion, and the development of enhanced human body parts. These bioethical issues have raised ethical questions related to the use of modern technology and how it may affect the future of society. These questions consider issues such as: what is the identity of future children? Have human beings become a commodity exchanged by those who have the ability to own them? What is the meaning of justice in medical treatment? How can physicians and nurses perform humanitarian work? Discussions of these questions should begin by determining their relationships with typical social and cultural values in society, such as life and death, marriage, family, fatherhood, motherhood, relatives, and next-of-kin. This paper presents a review of the important Arabic literature that has been written on these bioethical issues to show the contributions of Arab scholars in this field. Arabic studies in bioethics can be classified into three types: original Arabic writings, translated studies, and congresses held in the Arab region.