Public bioethics bodies are used internationally as institutions with the declared aims of facilitating societal debate and providing policy advice in certain areas of scientific inquiry raising questions of values and legitimate science. In the United States, bioethical experts in these institutions use the language of consensus building to justify and define the outcome of the enterprise. However, the implications of public bioethics at science-policy boundaries are underexamined. Political interest in such bodies continues while their influence on societal consensus, public (...) debate, and science policy remains ambiguous. This article presents a theoretical discussion of public bioethics bodies as boundary organizations and examines them in terms of relationship to the moral and cognitive authority of science and other forms of expertise, mechanisms for public participation in controversial science policy, and the deployment of consensus models. The theoretical discussion is examined in the case of the U.S. Human Embryo Research Panel. (shrink)

Bioethics evolved from traditional physician ethics and theological ethics. It has become important in contemporary discussions of Medicine and ethics. But in contemporary secular societies the foundations of bioethics are minimal in their content and often rely on procedural ethics. The bioethics of particular communities, particularly religious communities, are richer than the procedural ethics of a secular society. Religious bioethics, situated within religious communities, are richer in content in general and in the lived reality.