RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIFE IN THE CONTEXT OF BIOETHICAL ISSUES

Abstract

In this paper the author analyses the responsibility for life in the context of bioethical issues. The author stands for the hypothesis that the correlation between perception and ‘responsibility for life’ as well as view on a series of other issues
shape specific ‘profiles’ of responsibility for life.
Opinion poll research has been carried out in April of 2005, at five faculties of the University of Zagreb, on the occasional
sample of 492 respondents of the first and final year of study.
Prior to this, two factors have been established, ‘responsibility only for human life’ (F1) – anthropocentric responsibility
and ‘responsibility for all life’ (F2) – biocentric responsibility, which are in correlation with the factors obtained
with the instruments by means of which a public opinion has been investigated, on ‘death and the meaning of life’, ‘biocentrism’,
‘social and environmental orientations’, ‘belief’, ‘cloning’, ‘donating human organs’, ‘genetic engineering’, and
on assertions on the ‘status of human embryo’ and ‘euthanasia’. Correlations of factor structures have shown the following:
Anthropocentric responsibility is connected with the following factors: ‘individualism’, ‘autonomy of nature’, anthropocentrism’,
‘cosmic religion’ and ‘superstition – stereotypes’, ‘genetic creation of a super‐human’, and those who more
incline to this opinion are male persons and university students at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval
Architecture. Biocentric responsibility is connected with the following factors: ‘the meaning of life in believing in God’
and ‘meaning of life in a community’, ‘respect for life’ and ‘protection of life’, then ‘eco‐centrism’, ‘Christian belief’.