The Bioethical Compass: Navigating Contemporary Bioethics

Diego Menniti (D. Be., S. Th. L.)

The Bioethical Compass: Navigating Contemporary Bioethics argues that bioethics must recover its normative character and grounding in objective moral truth. Diego Menniti presents bioethics not as a neutral catalog of competing opinions but as a discipline ordered toward the rational defense of enduring moral principles capable of guiding judgment in medicine, science, and public life.

The book traces the historical development of bioethics from the Hippocratic tradition and Fritz Jahr to Van Rensselaer Potter, the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the Belmont Report, showing how modern technological and medical developments shaped the field. It then examines the contemporary arena of bioethical debate, engaging dominant moral theories, the role of conscience in moral discernment, and the challenges posed by relativism and ethical fragmentation.

A central section analyzes the principal bioethical principles—autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, paternalism, and informed consent—arguing that these concepts become unstable when detached from a coherent anthropology.

The work culminates in the proposal of Quantum Personalist Ethics, a synthesis that integrates quantum science, metaphysical anthropology, and the Christian intellectual tradition, presenting the human person as ontologically singular, irreducible, and unrepeatable. The book is primarily conceptual and methodological, establishing the philosophical foundations for bioethical reasoning while reserving detailed analyses of specific controversies for future work.