As the public profile of bioethics rises, and as litigation about issues ranging from assisted reproduction to gene therapy multiplies, the presence of bioethics experts in a litigation context has become more common. Dozens of appellate opinions refer to bioethics testimony in the lower courts. Today's technical advisory services for attorneys advertise bioethics experts along with experts in scientific fields. A single bioethicist has served as an expert in more than fifty cases. In all likelihood, opportunities for bioethicists to fill (...) the role of testifying expert will grow as medicine and biotechnology become more complex. Bioethics experts have also been involved in several other kinds of litigation-related activities, including investigation, consultation with attorneys, preparing reports that express expert opinions, and explaining and defending these opinions by deposition.Despite the growth of these activities by bioethicists, they have never been free of controversy, have recently been received with little enthusiasm by the judiciary, and could become highly problematic in the future. (shrink)

This paper offers an exposition of what the question of method in ethics consultation involves under two conditions: when ethics consultation is regarded as a practice and when the question of method is treated systematically. It discusses the concept of the practice and the importance of rules in constituting the actions, cognition, and perceptions of practitioners. The main body of the paper focuses on three elements of the question of method: canon, discipline, and history, which are treated heuristically to outline (...) what the question of method in ethics consultation fully involves. (shrink)

The term, “bioethics” was coined in 1970 by American cancerologist V. R. Potter. In the few decades since, the field of bioethics has emerged as an important discipline. The field has attained a remarkable degree of public recognition in a relatively short period of time. The “right to die” cases such as In re Quinlan placed bioethical issues on the front pages. Although the discipline is of recent vintage, the past quarter century has witnessed a flurry of scholarly activity, creating (...) a substantial body of bioethical literature. Moreover, the bioethics movement has manifested itself in institutional expressions. Universities and medical schools have added courses in bioethics to their curricula. In 1974, federal legislation and regulations mandated that federal grantees conducting human subjects research establish institutional review boards to safeguard subjects’ welfare, and even absent a legislative mandate numerous hospitals created ethics committees. Centers and institutes, devoted exclusively to the study of bioethical issues, have been founded. (shrink)

El Convenio de Oviedo, de 1997, demuestra la dificultad de llegar a acuerdos internacionales sobre cómo regular la investigación biomédica, en especial los límites de la investigación con embriones. Algunos temas de Bioética muestran la pluralidad de doctrinas y de sistemas morales; es más, pueden indicar el final de la era del consenso. El final de la pax bioetica, que tanto significó para el éxito de la disciplina a lo largo de tres décadas. Tender puentes, forjar consenso ha sido, en (...) efecto, una de las contribuciones más valiosas del discurso bioético y de los nuevos expertos en Bioética. Desde los años setenta, los principios del Liberalismo y las actitudes pragmáticas han sido el núcleo de su ideología, un tipo de consenso «americano» para poner fronteras a las ideologías políticas o radicales. Sin embargo, la actual agenda ampliada de la Bioética, así su expansión internacional, están minando el consenso básico. Un giro más político de la Bioética podría, tal vez, ofrecer algunos acuerdos sobre temas específicos. Este tipo de consenso estaría también más cerca de los intereses de los ciudadanos, así como del nuevo contexto, global y social: sería un consenso «republicano», por así decirlo. El artículo analiza la evolución desde la etapa del consenso –tender puentes, principios comunes, procedimientos «no densos»– hacia los acuerdos plurales –contextuales, «densos»–, teniendo en cuenta la pluralidad de los valores morales y de las fronteras culturales. (shrink)