"Motorcyle Diaries" a Medical Ethics Flick

Unbeknownst to young Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, he was both a political revolutionary and a medical ethicist. The latter led to the former. On his journey, Che noticed the direct relationship between how a society treats its sick and its poor & the ethics (or lack thereof) of said society. What might this relationship tell us about a nation complacent in the face of 45 million uninsured and millions more left without adequate health care? -Dominic Sisti

Harvard Bioethics

Harvard held off on bioethics for a very, very long time. Ezekiel Emanuel worked hard to build something there before he moved to NIH. Then Harvard's Department of Social Medicine advanced the notion that bioethics needs to be framed as something other than "bioethics," and created its own, small division of medical ethics to keep that faith. Like several other top schools, Harvard has kept a low profile on the bioethics scene. Beginning in 2002, though, Harvard has been grabbing up senior scholars in bioethics, spread out across several schools and departments. Norman Daniels now chairs an amazing graduate education steering committee that is offering a PhD level degree in bioethics. Faculty include Dan Brock, Allan Brandt, Nicholas Christakis, Norm, Frances Kamm, Thomas Scanlon and Dan Wikler.

Military Medical Ethics

JAMA clued me in on this new two-volume set on medical ethics in the military.