The Ethics of Bioethics

The American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities, and Albany Medical College, of Union University, and Union's Graduate College and Union College are jointly sponsoring this conference that deals with the issue that comes up over and over in this blog: What is the difference between ethical and unethical bioethics? Are bioethicists (whatever that means) supposed to be ethical people, and if so what does that mean? For example, bioethicists support their work with funds from all sorts of sources: universities built with tobacco money, federal grant money and foundation money that is heavily laden with government philosophy, and, yes, from companies, including pharmaceutical companies.

If you believe some critics of bioethics, most notably Carl Elliott of Minnesota, being remotely close to at least one of these sources, big pharma, is an unforgivable sin. If you believe the most aggressive defenders of working with and for companies, it is thickheaded to turn down corporate research in bioethics out of repugnance while you seek a tenured guarantee of a salary (from a health system) funded largely by corporations. And then there is the matter of bioethicists and politics: Howard Dean has a bioethicist, and some (including me) say that the President's Council was used as a political tool in the last election. Bioethicists campaigned for Proposition 71.

Bioethicists have been sniping, arguing, and posturing about these issues, and there has been some real struggle to figure them out.

Finally there will be a big pow-wow - a major conference about bioethics' "big sins," including the worst mistakes made by bioethicists and some of the strategic errors made by bioethics centers. But the big goal for this meeting isn't to identify those mistakes, but to avoid new ones - it is maybe the most important issue in bioethics' recent history. The conference will attract a whole lot of scrutiny by the media and by bioethics' critics - will be setting standards for ethical conduct by bioethicists. There will be fireworks and there will be good intentions, and with any luck there will be progress. Save the dates: April 7-9. If you want to speak, there is an [PDF] invitation to you to make a 250 word proposal. Hope to see you in the NY capital in the spring! - gm (soon to be of AMC myself)