Utilitarian bioethics

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Utilitarian bioethics refers to the branch of bioethics that incorporates principles of utilitarianism to directing practices and resources where they will have the most usefulness and highest likelihood to produce happiness, in regards to medicine, health, and medical or biological research.^[1][2]

Utilitarian bioethics deals with whether or not decisions of biology or medicine are good based on the Greatest Happiness principle, and thus any action or decision that leads to happiness for the greatest number of people is good.^[1] Many see problems with the morality of utilitarian bioethics, citing moral dilemmas in medical research and triage for example. Still, proponents for utilitarian bioethics look toward models like quality-adjusted life years (QALY) and medical policies like the Texas Advanced Directives Act (TADA) and euthanasia in the Netherlands as advancements in modern health care, while dissenting views argue of its devaluing of individual human life.