Bioethics - Development of An Interdisciplinary Field

Development of An Interdisciplinary Field

Although bioethical issues have been debated since ancient times, and public attention briefly focused on the role of human subjects in biomedical experiments following the revelation of Nazi experiments conducted during World War II, the contemporary field of bioethics first emerged as an academic interdisciplinary field in Anglophone societies in the 1960s. Technological advances in such diverse areas as organ transplantation and end-of-life care, including the development of kidney dialysis and respirators, posed novel questions regarding when and how care might be withdrawn. Furthermore, as philosophy in Britain and elsewhere moved away from the influences of logical positivism and emotivism, the development of theories of ethics and their application to practical problems gained in interest. These questions were often discussed by philosophers and religious scholars; in England, there were notable contributions from GEM Anscombe and RM Hare. By the 1970s, bioethical think tanks and academic bioethics programs had emerged. Among the earliest such institutions were the Hastings Center (originally known as The Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences), founded in 1969 by philosopher Daniel Callahan and psychiatrist Willard Gaylin, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, established at Georgetown University in 1971. The publication of Principles of Biomedical Ethics by James F. Childress and Tom Beauchamp—the first American textbook of bioethics—marked a transformative moment in the discipline. The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, held in 1975, was the first self-regulatory discussion proposed by scientists, in order to discuss the different aspects involved in DNA recombinant research. In Brazil, the first university to teach Bioethics was Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, taught by Prof. Joaquim Clotet, in 1988.

During the subsequent three decades, bioethical issues gained widespread attention through the court cases surrounding the deaths of Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan and Terri Schiavo. The field developed its own cadre of widely known advocates, such as Al Jonsen at the University of Washington, John C Fletcher at the University of Virginia, Ruth Faden at Johns Hopkins University, and Arthur Caplan at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. US Presidents have focused attention on bioethics for several decades, for instance by forming the President's Commission on the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedicine and Behavioral Research, which produced the landmark report, "Defining Death" in 1981. President George W. Bush also relied upon a Council on Bioethics in rendering decisions in areas such as the public funding of embryonic stem-cell research.