Does Steve Biko have more to offer medical ethics than his death?
Date
2015
Authors
Poole, Samuel Cedric Herbert Bazil
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Abstract
Since his death at the hands of the South African security police on 12 September 1977, much
has been written in medical, legal and other literature about Steve Biko. This dissertation
explores the medical literature and finds that the vast majority of authors, when writing about
Biko, refer primarily to his death, the role of the medical profession in the events leading up to
his death, and the ethical issues regarding dual loyalties that arise from studying those issues.
In my research question I ask: Does Steve Biko have more to offer medical ethics than his
death? In exploring Steve Biko’s writings as collected together in I Write What I Like, I find an
underlying thinking which guided Biko’s philosophy. I show that this underlying philosophy is
nothing other than the philosophy which underlies ubuntu and I explore how ubuntu should
influence our medical ethical thinking and suggest that this could be Biko’s real contribution to
medical ethics, namely an ethic that takes seriously the contribution that African moral
thinking has to make in the field of medical ethics, a contribution that does nothing less than
give to medical ethics a more human face, a contribution which Biko himself believed was
what Africa was still to give to the world, a more human face.
I critically review the writings and philosophy of Steve Biko and identify key notions or
conceptions that are of relevance to medical ethics and then explore the impact and relevance
of these key notions and conceptions to the fundamental bioethical issues of autonomy, dignity
and confidentiality. I defend the normative claim that integrating Biko’s and other salient
African ethical conceptions into our predominantly Western bioethical thinking is a moral
requirement.
Description
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of
MSc (Med) in Bioethics and Health Law,
Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics,
University of the Witwatersrand.
Johannesburg, 25 January 2015