Artificial Kidneys and the Emergence of Bioethics

This paper challenges the received view of the emergence of biomedical ethics as a distinct field. That account, championed by such scholars as David Rothman and Albert Jonsen, says that bioethics began when clinicians sought help from lay ‘outsiders’ because the traditional sources of medical ethics provided no guidance in deciding, for example, whom among many candidates should receive scarce haemodialysis treatments. Laypersons were expected to provide a moral skill clinicians lacked. But an examination of largely overlooked evidence from the period tells a different story. I argue that the received account overstates what those physicians who opened the doors to the outsiders expected laypersons to contribute. The historical materials at least partly contest the claim that the traditional precepts of medical ethics had ceased to operate upon the collective conscience of those physicians who in the 1960s first confronted the moral issues created by new and life-saving medical technologies

Bioethics · Conscience · CONTEST · Engineering ethics · Environmental ethics · Medical ethics · Political science · Sociology · Ethics and Legal Issues in Pediatric Healthcare · Ethics in medical practice · Medicine · Organ Donation and Transplantation · Law · Philosophy

• Ethics and Experts

  Cheryl N Noble, Peter Singer et al.•The Hastings Center Report•1982

  Add to list

• Special Supplement

  Albert R Jonsen, Shana Alexander et al.•The Hastings Center Report•1993

  Add to list

• The Resistible Rise of Medical Ethics

  Roger Cooter•Social History of Medicine•1995

  Add to list