Biomedical Engineering Ethics Article Analysis: The Importance of Ethical Standards in Bioengineering

Biomedical engineering is defined as the discipline that advances knowledge in engineering, biology, and medicine (Department of Bioengineering). According to the article, “Biomedical Engineering Ethics,” leading up to World War II, biomedical engineering was never a field of study, but after the war it has emerged and expanded very rapidly (Brey). While the field itself can entail a wide array of applications and ideas, it has been a highly talked about topic due to the ethics of engineering systems to help the human species while using various rhetorical strategies to help the audience reach a conclusion on the idea.

Currently, there are no specified ethics of biomedical engineering but there are general ethics when it comes to engineering as a whole (Brey). Biomedical engineers are generally labeled as different than those who are in the medical field, yet still are similar to those of a medical professional. Medical professionals and biomedical engineers both aim for common goals and they are to contribute to exceptional healthcare and patient care. With this said, biomedical engineers often combine the ethics of medical professionals and engineers, including a responsibility to follow research and development ethical standards. Biomedical engineers should have set ethical standards when it comes the nature of what is moral and what is not to help prevent mankind from becoming too powerful, harming society, and for there to simply be a set ethical standard in a largely growing field.

Since the end of World War II, biomedical engineering has since extended the engineering theory and practices in the lifeworld by making the resources of life available to life itself (Mitcham). Ethics is defined as the moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conduction of an activity (Oxford). In today’s era, engineers are held to eight different codes of ethics with safety being prioritized (Engineers). Specifically, biomedical engineering and other engineering fields within the medical field are held to various different codes ranging from the general engineering code of ethics to the American Medical Associations code of ethics. Engineering has been dated back to the 18th century but had ethical codes that were not so ethical. In the early 1900s, the problem was that the engineer was under obligation of the client while the client was usually the employer. This led to an increase in company loyalty, but there was also an increase in the number of unreported incidents in various engineering calculations. Some of the most popular incidents are the 1972 Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART) case, the 1974 Paris DC-10 crash, and the meltdown of the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979 (Mitcham).

Soon after these major incidents, the engineering field began to establish set ethical standards in terms of public welfare and whistleblowing. Whistleblowing may be considered a bad thing in various fields, but in engineering it is actually a good thing. Whistleblowing in engineering is when an engineer tells upper management of an incident that is occurring where another engineer is not correctly following the ethical standards which can lead to heavy consequences via upper management or the United States Government. In the article “Ethics in Bioengineering,” the author uses his authoritative standing to help convey the single message that there should be set standards for ethics in bioengineering. The author, Carl Mitcham, is currently an engineering ethics professor at Colorado School of Mines and helps co-direct the Ethics Across Campus program. The author appears to have some fallacies in his work, however. Dr. Mitcham has a PhD in physiology so he can be declared a credible and reliable source for this given article.

One of the most commonly known engineering disasters that has taken place in the world is Chernobyl. Chernobyl was a Nuclear Power Plant that was near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine. It has been considered the worst nuclear disaster to have taken place with it rated at seven, which is the maximum severity on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES). The only other nuclear disaster to achieve the same ranking is the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster. The Chernobyl Power Plant disaster started during a safety test on an RBMK-type nuclear reactor, which is a reactor type commonly used in Russia. The accident took place when the procedure during the safety test was not followed combined with a design flaw in the RBMK reactor, which was later found out, to cause an unstable environment leading to a nuclear chain reaction of uranium and an electrical power surplus. This caused the reactor core to rupture and an open-air reaction to occur at the same time causing a massive steam explosion releasing highly toxic amounts of radiation.

Within 36 hours of the explosion, a 19-mile radius exclusion zone was created to protect the people of Pripyat. The initial cause of this deadly incident was traced back to the Chief Engineer overriding his authority and not following a guideline. The reactor was to not go lower that 700 megawatts of electrical power, but the Chief Engineer had said that 200 megawatts was the true threshold. Although the Chief Engineer can be mostly blamed, the engineers who designed the structure are also at fault. There was a design flaw in the RBMK that was known about when it was produced so they had overlooked the bigger picture and did not follow the general ethics of engineering or whistleblowing tactics. This has been one of the leading examples as to why engineers should be held accountable to following basic ethical standards in their respective fields.

Dr. Mitcham uses little amounts of rhetorical appeals in his article, but he does excel in the appeals that are presented. Dr. Mitcham is demonstrating ethos in “Ethics of Bioengineering” by using his background as having a PhD in physiology to help show the ethical aspects to functions of the world. While the article is purely a scholarly article in the field of science, it is very clear when Dr. Mitcham uses his background to demonstrate an idea or an action, as well as its impact on society. Dr. Mitcham also uses the logical appeal to help the reader understand how simple it truly is to follow the ethical standards, especially in such a diverse field. In the rest of the article however, there is a lack of rhetorical strategies used due to the academic matter of the paper.

Many similar articles share similar opinions with Dr. Mitcham, even going as far as citing Dr. Mitcham’s work. When it comes to Dr. Mitcham’s work, it can appear to have rhetorical fallacies embedded in them due to the vast array of vocabulary and the type of writing style used, but there is no evidence showing any sign of fallacies within “Ethics in Bioengineering.”

With the expansion of engineering since the last World War, there should be a new set of standards established for the respective engineering fields. While general engineers have set ethical standards, engineers that typically deal with problems in the medical field have no set ethical standards leaving them lost as to what is morally ethical and what is not. While a biomedical engineer can easily follow the basic ethical standards to that of a general engineer, there should be clarification as to what ethics biomedical engineers must follow. Biomedical engineering entails many real-world problems between humans and health, leaving a wide margin for immoral situations to take place such as the Chernobyl example mentioned previously.

Through the article, “Ethics in Bioengineering,” Dr. Mitcham uses ethos to his advantage as he is authoritative in this subject as he possesses a PhD in physiology and teaches an ethics course at the Colorado School of Mines. In article, there is a lack of other rhetorical strategies and fallacies due to the paper being taken from an academic journal. All in all, biomedical engineers should have set ethical standards put into place to deter unethical issues in a highly expanding field.