Abstract
This paper discusses the debate in the Journal of Medical Ethics over the ethics of care between P. Allmark and A. Bradshaw. For the last 20 years, since C. Gilligan's work, the possibility of an ethics based on the concept of care has drawn considerable attention. Allmark argued that an ethics of care could not be based on the premise that care encompassed moral values because the word "care" itself could be applied to good or evil situations. Bradshow argued that care ethics could be comprehensible only when linked to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Allmark said that Bradshaw's care ethics had normative and descriptive points in so far as defined what should be cared for and haw it should be done, but that she did not respond to his assertion that a moral sense might not be derived from care itself, and also that her understandings about care contained philosophical and historical difficulties. Allmark is justified in arguing that, in general usage, care is a neutral term, and that as a result it can not be said to have moral overtones. Care can be used in the moral sense only if its subject and methods are clearly defined. Further, Allmark's attempt to cast doubt on Bradshaw's view of nursing care as a God-sent profession based on the Judeo-Christian tradition is acceptable from the viewpoint of modern nursing. In the context of nursing, however, it is beyond doubt that the subject of care is the sick and that the recovery of her health is intended. The discussion of care must include a very significant way of thinking by nurses in order to achieve the level of care desired, and it should rest on a foundation of respect for individual persons. The whole discussion of care in this context cannot be invalidated simply because the term "care" is also used in torture.
