Introduction

This chapter presents findings from a wider project exploring the chal-
lenges for biological scientists of incorporating the additional role of
healthcare worker into their professional identities (Fitzgerald et al.
2013b). Our particular focus will be the manner in which the scien-
tists revealed that working in clinical reproductive science was a surpris-
ingly ongoing ethical challenge. The scientists’ response to this was to
elaborate an ‘everyday ethics’ to guide their practice. Brodwin ( 2013 :
4) defined everyday ethics in terms of comments made by clinical
staff about the ‘rightness or wrongness’ of their work or those ‘second
thoughts and fleeting moments of self-doubt’ ( 2013 : 4) that emerge dur-
ing routine practice. For example, all scientists took pride in providing

6

Ethics for Embryologists

Ruth P. Fitzgerald and Michael Legge

© The Author(s) 2017
R.M. Shaw (ed.), Bioethics Beyond Altruism,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55532-4_6

141

R.P. Fitzgerald (*) · M. Legge
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
e-mail: [email protected]