Applied ethics: bioethics and environmental ethics

In short

Applied ethics takes the tools of normative theory and uses them on concrete practical questions, and its two largest branches are bioethics (ethics of life, medicine, research and biotechnology) and environmental ethics (the moral status of nature, animals and future generations). Both arose in the late 1960s and 1970s when new technology — ventilators, dialysis, transplantation, recombinant DNA, large dams, pesticides — produced choices older moral codes had never faced. In Indian BA/MA Philosophy papers this is almost always a full unit, examined through short notes (principlism, euthanasia, deep ecology, Chipko) and long essays comparing anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric positions. The same material is tested in UGC-NET Philosophy, UPSC Ethics (GS-IV), law and medical entrance interviews, and in hospital ethics-committee, CSR, ESG and clinical-research-associate job interviews.

Explained

What applied ethics is, and how it works

• Applied ethics = the branch of moral philosophy that evaluates particular practices, policies and cases, as distinct from normative ethics (which theories are correct) and metaethics (what moral words mean).
• Three working methods:
  1. Deductivism / theory application — pick a theory (utilitarian, Kantian, virtue, Gandhian) and derive the verdict on the case.
  2. Principlism — work from mid-level principles that adherents of several theories can accept; dominant in bioethics.
  3. Casuistry — reason from paradigm cases by analogy, as courts do; useful where principles conflict.
• Reflective equilibrium (Rawls): adjust principles and considered judgements against each other until they cohere; the standard justification for not simply deducing verdicts.
• Why it matters practically: statutory bodies in India *require* ethical reasoning — ethics committees under the New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019, Environmental Impact Assessment appraisal committees, institutional animal ethics committees.
• Dirty-hands / moral dilemma structure: a genuine dilemma is a conflict of duties where any choice leaves a moral residue (triage, allocating one ventilator among three patients).

Bioethics: principles and core debates

• Born of scandal and technology: the Nuremberg Code (1947), the Declaration of Helsinki (1964, revised; latest revision 2024), the Belmont Report (1979) after the Tuskegee syphilis study.
• Beauchamp and Childress's four principles (principlism):
  1. Autonomy — respect the self-governing choices of a competent person; operationalised as informed consent (disclosure, comprehension, voluntariness, competence, documentation).
  2. Beneficence — act for the patient's good; weigh benefits against burdens.
  3. Non-maleficence — *primum non nocere*; includes avoiding futile or disproportionate treatment.
  4. Justice — fair distribution of benefits, burdens and scarce resources; fair selection of research subjects.
• The four are prima facie (W. D. Ross's term): each can be overridden, none is absolute, and balancing is a judgement, not an algorithm.
• Additional Indian ICMR principles (National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research Involving Human Participants, 2017): essentiality, voluntariness, non-exploitation, privacy and confidentiality, risk minimisation, professional competence, accountability and transparency, totality of responsibility, compliance.
• Core debates and the standard arguments:
  • Abortion — personhood and the status of the foetus (potentiality argument vs. actual-interests argument); bodily-autonomy arguments (Thomson's violinist); in India governed by the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 as amended in 2021 (up to 20 weeks on one RMP's opinion, up to 24 weeks for specified categories on two opinions, no upper limit for substantial foetal abnormality certified by a Medical Board), and sex determination for sex selection is prohibited by the PCPNDT Act, 1994.
  • Euthanasia and end of life — voluntary / non-voluntary / involuntary; active vs. passive; the acts-and-omissions doctrine, doctrine of double effect (intending relief, foreseeing death), and the slippery-slope objection. India: active euthanasia remains an offence; *Aruna Shanbaug* (2011) allowed passive euthanasia and *Common Cause v. Union of India* (2018) recognised the right to die with dignity and advance medical directives (living wills), with the Supreme Court simplifying the procedure in 2023. Abetment of suicide is now under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (which replaced the IPC); attempted suicide was already decriminalised in effect by the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017.
  • Organ transplantation — altruistic donation, brain-stem death, presumed vs. express consent, the ethics of markets in organs. India: Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994 (amended 2011) bans commercial dealing, restricts living donation to near relatives or, otherwise, with Authorisation Committee approval; NOTTO coordinates.
  • Surrogacy and ART — commodification of women's labour, child's right to identity. India: Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 permits only altruistic surrogacy for eligible Indian couples and bans commercial surrogacy; the ART (Regulation) Act, 2021 regulates clinics and banks.
  • Research ethics — therapeutic misconception, placebo controls, standard of care in trials in poor countries, post-trial access, compensation for trial-related injury (mandated in India), data and safety monitoring.
  • Genetics and biotechnology — therapy vs. enhancement, germline editing (the 2018 He Jiankui case), "playing God" and the argument from human dignity, genetic privacy and discrimination, designer babies, cloning (therapeutic vs. reproductive), DBT–ICMR National Guidelines for Gene Therapy Product Development and Clinical Trials, 2019.
  • Confidentiality and its limits — duty to warn identifiable third parties; HIV disclosure to a spouse (*Mr X v. Hospital Z*, 1998).
  • Justice in health care — right to health as part of Article 21; the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017's rights-based approach; allocation criteria (need, benefit, lottery, queue, social worth — the last generally rejected).

Environmental ethics: positions on moral status

• The founding question (Richard Routley's "last man" argument, 1973): would it be wrong for the last human to destroy the last tree even with no human affected? If yes, value in nature is not only instrumental.
• Instrumental value (useful as a means) vs. intrinsic / inherent value (good in itself). The axis of the whole field.
• Anthropocentrism — only humans have direct moral standing; nature matters for human welfare. Strong version: resourcism. Weak/enlightened version (Bryan Norton): considered human preferences, including aesthetic and spiritual ones, already protect nature; intergenerational duty is key.
• Sentientism / animal ethics:
  • Peter Singer (utilitarian): equal consideration of interests; speciesism is a prejudice parallel to racism; sentience (capacity for suffering) is the criterion of moral considerability.
  • Tom Regan (deontological): animals that are "subjects-of-a-life" have inherent value and rights; opposes use of animals as mere resources, hence abolitionist about farming and experimentation.
  • The 3Rs in animal research — Replacement, Reduction, Refinement; in India regulated by CPCSEA, with Institutional Animal Ethics Committees; the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 is the parent statute.
• Biocentrism — all living things have good of their own: Albert Schweitzer's reverence for life; Paul Taylor's respect for nature with four duties (non-maleficence, non-interference, fidelity, restitutive justice); Jainism's *ahimsa* as an indigenous biocentrism.
• Ecocentrism / holism — wholes (species, ecosystems, the biotic community) are the locus of value:
  • Aldo Leopold's land ethic: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community."
  • Arne Naess's deep ecology (1973) — shallow ecology fights pollution for human health; deep ecology asks for a change of worldview: self-realisation of a wider "ecological Self", biospherical egalitarianism, and the eight-point platform (with George Sessions) including population reduction and non-interference with non-human richness.
  • Objection — environmental fascism (Regan): holism can license sacrificing individuals, including humans, for ecosystem health.
• Social and critical approaches:
  • Social ecology (Murray Bookchin): ecological crisis is rooted in social hierarchy and capitalism, not in human numbers alone.
  • Ecofeminism: Karen Warren's "logic of domination" links the subordination of women and of nature; Vandana Shiva and Bina Agarwal in India (Agarwal's "feminist environmentalism" stresses material dependence rather than essential affinity).
  • Environmental justice — unequal distribution of ecological burdens (Bhopal gas disaster 1984, e-waste in Moradabad, stone quarry and tannery pollution); "environmentalism of the poor" (Ramachandra Guha, Madhav Gadgil).
  • Guha's critique of deep ecology (1989): wilderness preservation transplanted to India displaces forest-dependent people; the Indian problem is overconsumption and militarisation, not population alone.
• Indian traditions and movements: *Prithvi Sukta* (Atharva Veda), Buddhist and Jain *ahimsa*, Bishnoi protection of trees and blackbuck, Gandhi's "the Earth has enough for everyone's need, not for everyone's greed", trusteeship and swadeshi; Chipko (1973, Uttarakhand — Sunderlal Bahuguna, Chandi Prasad Bhatt), Appiko (Karnataka), Silent Valley (Kerala), Narmada Bachao Andolan (Medha Patkar — displacement and rehabilitation), Niyamgiri (gram sabha consent, 2013).

Sustainability, future generations and climate

• Sustainable development (Brundtland, *Our Common Future*, 1987): development that meets present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.
• Weak sustainability (natural capital substitutable by man-made capital) vs. strong sustainability (critical natural capital must be maintained).
• Intergenerational justice: Rawlsian just savings principle; the non-identity problem (Parfit) — our policies change who exists, so future people cannot complain of being harmed; discounting the future is a moral, not merely economic, choice.
• Principles in environmental law and ethics (adopted by Indian courts as part of Article 21 jurisprudence):
  • Polluter pays (*Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action*, 1996; *Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum*, 1996), precautionary principle, public trust doctrine (*M. C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath*, 1997), sustainable development, absolute liability (*M. C. Mehta v. Union of India*, 1987 — Oleum gas leak).
  • Common but differentiated responsibilities and climate justice: historical emissions, per-capita entitlement, India's position in the UNFCCC/Paris framework; India's updated NDCs and the net-zero-by-2070 pledge; LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) as a consumption-ethics initiative.
• Indian constitutional and statutory frame: Article 48A (State to protect the environment) and Article 51A(g) (fundamental duty of every citizen); Water Act 1974; Air Act 1981; Environment (Protection) Act 1986; Forest (Conservation) Act 1980 as amended in 2023; Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972 as amended 2022; Biological Diversity Act 2002 (amended 2023) with access and benefit-sharing; Forest Rights Act 2006; Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016; National Green Tribunal Act 2010; EIA Notification 2006; Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026 (in force from 1 April 2026, replacing the 2016 Rules); Extended Producer Responsibility under the Plastic Waste and E-Waste Rules. CPCB and State Pollution Control Boards are the regulators.

Theories applied: how each verdict is generated

• Utilitarianism: aggregate welfare; supports triage by expected benefit, cost-effectiveness (QALY-based) rationing, and strong animal-welfare conclusions; criticised for permitting sacrifice of individuals and for ignoring distribution.
• Kantian deontology: persons are ends in themselves, never mere means — the strongest ground for informed consent and against organ markets and non-consensual research; criticised for excluding non-rational beings (animals, ecosystems) from direct duty (Kant allows only indirect duties).
• Virtue ethics: asks what a compassionate, truthful, just physician or a temperate citizen would do; grounds environmental virtues (frugality, humility, gratitude, *aparigraha*) and is strong where rules run out, weak on determinate guidance.
• Rights-based and capability approaches: Sen and Nussbaum — health and a healthy environment as capabilities; Nussbaum extends capabilities to sentient animals.
• Care ethics (Gilligan, Noddings): relationships and responsiveness rather than impartial rules; influential in nursing ethics and ecofeminism.
• Gandhian ethics: *ahimsa*, trusteeship, voluntary simplicity, swadeshi, means-ends unity — the most examinable Indian framework in both branches.

Ethics committees and decision procedure

• Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) for human research in India: registered with the National Ethics Committee Registry for Biomedical and Health Research (NECRBHR) under CDSCO/DGHS; constitution of at least 7 members including a chairperson external to the institution, a basic medical scientist, clinician, legal expert, social scientist/philosopher/ethicist and a lay person; reviews protocol, consent documents, compensation, conflicts of interest; continuing review at least annually; records retained as required by the 2019 Rules.
• Review categories: full-board, expedited and exempt review; "minimal risk", "low-than-minimal risk" and "more than minimal risk" classification.
• Clinical ethics case method (practical steps for exams and interviews): 1) gather medical facts; 2) identify the decision-maker and capacity; 3) elicit patient preferences / advance directive / surrogate; 4) list options with benefits and burdens; 5) apply the four principles and name the conflict; 6) consider law and institutional policy; 7) check contextual features — family, cost, equity; 8) choose, justify, document, and plan review.
• Environmental decision procedure: screening and scoping → baseline study → impact prediction → alternatives → mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimise, restore, offset) → public hearing → appraisal → conditions and monitoring; an ethically adequate EIA requires free, prior and informed consultation and genuine consideration of a no-project alternative.

Key points

• Applied ethics - evaluation of concrete practices and policies, distinguished from normative ethics and metaethics.
• Principlism - the four prima facie principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice; mid-level, theory-neutral, requires balancing.
• Informed consent - disclosure, comprehension, voluntariness, competence; the operational face of autonomy and the most litigated bioethical duty.
• Doctrine of double effect - a bad effect may be permissible if unintended, proportionate, and not the means to the good effect.
• Passive euthanasia in India - lawful since *Aruna Shanbaug* (2011); advance directives recognised in *Common Cause* (2018), procedure simplified in 2023; active euthanasia remains an offence.
• MTP Act, 1971 (amended 2021) - 20 weeks generally, 24 for specified categories, no limit for substantial foetal abnormality on Medical Board certification.
• Altruistic-only rule - the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 and the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994 both ban commercial dealing.
• Speciesism - Singer's term for unjustified preference for one's own species; sentience, not species, confers moral considerability.
• Subject-of-a-life - Regan's criterion for inherent value and animal rights, a deontological rather than utilitarian ground.
• Anthropocentrism / biocentrism / ecocentrism - the three concentric widenings of the moral circle; the field's organising classification.
• Land ethic - Leopold: right action preserves the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community.
• Deep ecology - Naess: biospherical egalitarianism and a change in worldview, not merely pollution control (shallow ecology).
• Environmental fascism - Regan's objection that holism sacrifices individuals to the good of the whole.
• Guha's critique - wilderness-first deep ecology ignores the livelihood claims of India's forest-dependent poor; Indian environmentalism is an environmentalism of the poor.
• Sustainable development - Brundtland 1987; weak sustainability allows substitution of natural capital, strong sustainability does not.
• Non-identity problem - Parfit: policies that change which future people exist complicate the claim that we harm them.
• Polluter pays, precautionary principle, public trust, absolute liability - the four judicially entrenched environmental principles in India.
• Article 48A and 51A(g) - the constitutional directive and fundamental duty on environmental protection; environment read into Article 21.

Examples

• Case 1 — Consent in a clinical trial. A rural participant with low literacy is enrolled in a drug trial; the investigator obtains a thumb impression after a five-minute oral summary, and the participant believes she is receiving guaranteed treatment.
  1. Facts: competence intact, comprehension doubtful, voluntariness compromised by dependence on the hospital for free care.
  2. Principles: autonomy violated through defective comprehension; non-maleficence at risk; justice at risk because the poor bear research burdens.
  3. The specific wrong is therapeutic misconception — confusing research with treatment.
  4. Required remedy under ICMR 2017 and the New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019: consent in a language she understands, an impartial witness for illiterate participants, audio-visual recording where required for vulnerable groups, re-consent on new information, and disclosure of free treatment and compensation for trial-related injury.
  5. Verdict: enrolment invalid as it stands; the IEC must be informed and consent retaken. Kantian and principlist reasoning converge; a crude utilitarian "the trial benefits millions" defence fails because it treats her as a mere means.

• Case 2 — One ventilator, three patients. During a surge, one ICU ventilator is free; patients are A (28, high survival probability), B (71, multiple comorbidities, low probability), C (45, moderate probability, sole earner for five dependents).
  1. Utilitarian / maximise-benefit: choose A — most expected life-years saved.
  2. Egalitarian: lottery or first-come-first-served to respect equal worth; rejects age as a criterion of worth but may accept "fair innings".
  3. Social-worth criterion (C's dependents) is generally rejected in medical ethics as it ranks persons by usefulness; dependents may matter for welfare support, not for triage priority.
  4. Defensible procedure: a published, transparent protocol applied by a triage officer separate from the treating team, with no withdrawal from B without reassessment criteria, and palliative care guaranteed to whoever is not ventilated.
  5. Verdict: A, on maximise-benefit, *only* under a pre-declared protocol — ad hoc bedside rationing is the ethical failure, not the choice itself.

• Case 3 — A dam and the people it displaces. A project will irrigate 1.8 lakh hectares and generate power, and will submerge 45 villages displacing about 25,000 people, two-thirds of them Scheduled Tribes, plus 1,200 hectares of forest.
  1. Cost-benefit utilitarianism: if aggregate gain exceeds loss, proceed with compensation — the reasoning that drove the Narmada projects.
  2. Rights and justice objections: the displaced bear a concentrated, irreversible loss for diffuse gains, and consent is absent; Rawls's difference principle condemns a gain that worsens the worst-off.
  3. Statutory requirements in India: EIA and public hearing under the EIA Notification 2006; forest clearance under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 as amended; recognition of rights and gram-sabha consent under the Forest Rights Act, 2006; resettlement and rehabilitation entitlements and consent thresholds under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.
  4. Ecocentric view: the river system has value independent of use; the mitigation hierarchy demands the no-project and lower-dam alternatives be assessed, not merely offsets.
  5. Verdict: ethically permissible only with land-for-land rehabilitation in place *before* submergence, gram-sabha consent, and demonstrated absence of a less harmful alternative — the *Niyamgiri* model of consent is the Indian benchmark.

• Case 4 — Animal testing of a cosmetic ingredient. A company proposes an acute dermal-irritation test on 24 rabbits for a new cosmetic preservative; a validated in-vitro reconstructed-human-epidermis assay exists.
  1. Singer: the rabbits' suffering counts equally with like human interests; a trivial human interest (a new cosmetic) cannot outweigh it — the test is wrong.
  2. Regan: the rabbits are subjects-of-a-life with inherent value; using them as mere resources is wrong regardless of the balance.
  3. 3Rs: Replacement is available, so the proposal fails at the first R; Reduction and Refinement are irrelevant once replacement exists.
  4. Indian regulation: cosmetic testing on animals and the import of animal-tested cosmetics are prohibited under the cosmetics rules framed under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act (now the Cosmetics Rules, 2020); research animals otherwise require Institutional Animal Ethics Committee approval under CPCSEA.
  5. Verdict: refuse; the in-vitro assay is both the legal and the ethical course.

• Case 5 — Comparison table: how the three stances rank a wetland's fate.

• Comparison: bioethics and environmental ethics side by side.

Where it is used

• Hospitals and medical colleges: clinical ethics committees, NABH accreditation requirements, consent-document design, DNR and end-of-life policy, grievance handling — roles for ethics-committee members including a philosopher or social scientist.
• Clinical research and pharma (Syngene, Lambda, Veeda, Novartis/Dr Reddy's R&D): IEC coordinators, clinical research associates, regulatory-affairs staff auditing consent, compensation and Helsinki/ICMR/GCP compliance.
• Environment, ESG and sustainability teams: BRSR (Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting) disclosures mandated by SEBI for the top listed companies, EIA consultants accredited by QCI-NABET, carbon-accounting and CSR roles under the Companies Act, 2013.
• Public policy and governance: UPSC GS-IV and interview questions on development-versus-environment and medical ethics; NITI Aayog, state pollution control boards, National Green Tribunal litigation support, Forest Rights Act implementation.
• Civil society and law: environmental and health-rights litigation (CPR, LIFE, Vidhi), Narmada Bachao Andolan-type campaigns, animal-welfare organisations working with AWBI and CPCSEA.
• Teaching, journalism and ethics training: NEP-aligned value-education and professional-ethics courses, science-and-society journalism, corporate ethics training modules.

Interview questions

• Q: How does applied ethics differ from normative ethics? A: Normative ethics asks which general theory or principles are correct; applied ethics uses principles, theories and analogous cases to settle particular practices such as euthanasia, surrogacy or dam construction.
• Q: What are the four principles of biomedical ethics, and are any of them absolute? A: Autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. None is absolute — they are prima facie and can be overridden when they conflict, which is why balancing and justification are required.
• Q: What makes consent "informed"? A: Adequate disclosure, genuine comprehension, voluntariness free of coercion or undue inducement, and decision-making competence — documented; in India also an impartial witness for illiterate participants.
• Q: Is passive euthanasia legal in India? A: Yes — withdrawal or withholding of life support from a terminally ill or permanently vegetative patient has been lawful since *Aruna Shanbaug* (2011), with advance directives recognised in *Common Cause* (2018) and the procedure simplified by the Supreme Court in 2023; active euthanasia remains a criminal offence.
• Q: Explain the doctrine of double effect with a medical example. A: A morphine dose intended to relieve intractable pain may be given even if it foreseeably shortens life, because death is foreseen but not intended, is not the means to relief, and the good outweighs the harm.
• Q: What is the "last man" argument and what does it establish? A: Routley's thought experiment — if the last human wrongly destroys the last living things though no human is affected, nature must have more than instrumental value, which opens space for non-anthropocentric ethics.
• Q: How do Singer and Regan differ on animals? A: Singer is a utilitarian who grounds equal consideration in sentience and would permit a use that genuinely maximises welfare; Regan grounds inherent value in being a subject-of-a-life and holds animal rights that forbid such trade-offs outright.
• Q: State Leopold's land ethic and one objection to it. A: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community"; the objection, Regan's, is that such holism can justify sacrificing individuals — "environmental fascism".
• Q: Why did Ramachandra Guha criticise deep ecology? A: Because its wilderness-preservation emphasis, transplanted from the United States to India, displaces forest-dependent communities and misidentifies population rather than overconsumption as the cause of ecological crisis.
• Q: Distinguish weak and strong sustainability. A: Weak sustainability treats natural capital as substitutable by man-made capital as long as total capital is maintained; strong sustainability holds that critical natural capital — a climate system, an aquifer, a species — cannot be replaced and must be preserved.
• Q: Which environmental principles have Indian courts adopted? A: Sustainable development, the precautionary principle, polluter pays, the public trust doctrine and absolute liability (*M. C. Mehta*, 1987), read with Article 21 and Articles 48A and 51A(g).
• Q: A project is legally cleared but a tribal gram sabha objects. What does applied ethics add to the law? A: Legality is not sufficiency: free, prior and informed consent, a genuinely assessed no-project alternative, rehabilitation before displacement, and fair distribution of burdens are ethical requirements the clearance process may satisfy only formally — the *Niyamgiri* consent model is the benchmark.

Common mistakes

• Treating the four principles as a ranked checklist; they are prima facie and must be balanced and justified, not ticked off.
• Confusing autonomy with simply doing what the patient or family demands — autonomy presupposes competence and informed comprehension, and does not oblige futile treatment.
• Saying "euthanasia is legal in India" without the active/passive distinction and without naming *Aruna Shanbaug* and *Common Cause*.
• Equating animal welfare (Singer, utilitarian) with animal rights (Regan, deontological), or calling deep ecology an animal-rights position.
• Collapsing biocentrism and ecocentrism: biocentrism values living individuals, ecocentrism values wholes such as species and ecosystems.
• Describing sustainable development only as "balance between environment and development" without the Brundtland definition and the weak/strong distinction.
• Writing essays with no Indian content — omitting Chipko, Narmada, Niyamgiri, Bhopal, Gandhi's trusteeship, the MTP and Surrogacy Acts, or the judicially adopted principles.

Related topics

Normative ethics: virtue, duty and consequences · Business ethics and CSR · Social and political philosophy: justice and rights · Indian philosophy: dharma, ahimsa and karma · Philosophy of law and human rights · Metaethics: fact, value and moral realism