Why Bioethics Matters More Than Ever in Modern Medicine

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have developed functional eggs from human skins cells. The global genome editing market is set to grow from $6.2 billion in 2025 to $19.6 billion by 2032. We live in an age of astonishing medical breakthroughs. From artificial intelligence in diagnostics to cutting-edge fertility treatments, science seems to advance at breakneck speed. But amid all the excitement, one critical question risks being drowned out: just because we can do something, does that mean we should?

That’s the question at the heart of bioethics—the discipline that applies moral reasoning to all kinds of ethical questions. I launched the Bioethics Babe podcast to examine the tough questions and human flourishing in light of science, faith, and culture with top experts. In the first episode, I interviewed Dr. Joseph Meaney, past president and senior fellow at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. His message was simple but profound: medicine is only good medicine if it respects the dignity of the human person.

This principle—human dignity from fertilization to natural death—is not an abstract theological point. It is a practical compass in the hospital room, the clinic, and the research lab. We face bioethical questions more often than we realize: when a loved one is hospitalized, when we consider end-of-life care, and when policymakers debate surrogacy laws. Even deciding whether to use the latest medical technology is, at its core, a bioethical decision.

When we forget that every patient is more than a collection of symptoms, we risk treating people as disposable, as means to an end, or worse, as obstacles to efficiency. History offers chilling reminders of what happens when medicine divorces itself from ethics: eugenics programs, coerced sterilizations, and the exploitation of vulnerable populations in medical experiments.

And while we’d like to think we’ve moved beyond those abuses, we’re still crossing ethical lines today—from the over one million preborn children killed by abortion in the U.S. annually, to eugenic practices in IVF clinics, to the millions of frozen embryos who remain in limbo, to growing efforts to legalize assisted suicide. We are pushing the ethical boundaries faster than we can evaluate them. Whether we even wish to evaluate them as a society is a fair question.

The problem isn’t just in the extremes—it’s also in the everyday experience of patients navigating the modern healthcare system, which often feels fractured, cold, and impersonal. Think of how patients are left alone to navigate a maze of specialists. Overburdened doctors and nurses, however skilled, well-intentioned, and dedicated, are often forced into an assembly-line model of care due to the demands and quotas placed on them. Policymakers, hospitals, and insurers, meanwhile, redefine “healing” in ways that justify mutilating healthy bodies of teens struggling with sexual identity disorder or ending the lives of the sick and elderly rather than caring for them. In each case, the patient’s humanity is overshadowed by institutional convenience, economic incentives, distorted notions of progress, or even a misguided sense of patient autonomy.

Yes, autonomy matters. We rightly insist that patients should give informed consent and have the freedom to accept or reject treatments. But as Dr. Meaney points out in this episode, autonomy is not absolute. We are not islands, radically independent from one another. We are born dependent and often leaven this world dependent, relying on families, caregivers, and communities. When autonomy becomes “my body, my choice” untethered from objective moral ethical standards, it risks justifying harm to ourselves or others.

We also need to recover what it means to “do no harm” according to the Hippocratic Oath. Too often today, harm is redefined in ways that blur the moral lines. Take assisted suicide: for one patient, suicidal thoughts spark an urgent call to a hotline for help. For another—older, disabled, or simply discouraged—the same thoughts are validated with a lethal prescription. That isn’t compassion, it’s surrender. True care doesn’t abandon people in their suffering; it walks with them through it. Today, that principle is often twisted to mean ending suffering by ending the sufferer.

By contrast, a bioethics rooted in human dignity—as championed by the Catholic moral tradition—insists that no human being is reducible to utility, productivity, or convenience. Every human being, regardless of age, ability, or circumstance, has infinite value. This vision reframes medical care as accompaniment. Even when cure is impossible, care is always possible.

That is why patient advocacy is so vital. When loved ones step in to ensure that a hospitalized friend or family member receives thoughtful care, the outcome can be dramatically different. Doctors and nurses, even with the best intentions, may miss critical context or default to generic protocols. A vigilant advocate can remind the medical team that this is not just “a case,” but a person with dignity that must be honored.

The conversations we have on the Bioethics Babe podcast are ultimately about recovering the soul of medicine and ethics. It is a call to humanize science and medicine. Ethical principles such as proportionality and “do no harm” remind us that good ends can never justify immoral means. If we lose sight of that truth, medicine risks becoming an industry of techniques rather than a vocation of healing.

Scientific progress can be a gift, but it must never become a god. Without ethical guardrails, medical innovation can quickly turn from healing to harming. That’s why we must recover a clear moral vision—one that sees every human life as inherently valuable and worth protecting. The measure of any civilization is how it treats the most vulnerable—sick, elderly, preborn, and disabled people.

The real measure of good medicine is not simply what is technically possible, but what is morally right. Medicine should never be reduced to statistics, quotas, or cost-benefit analyses. It should always be about people. Because when we lose sight of the dignity of the human person, we don’t just risk bad medicine. We risk losing our humanity.

To hear my full conversation with Dr. Joseph Meaney click here or follow Bioethics Babe on your favorite podcast platform.