Abstract
Historian Charles Rosenberg cautions bioethicists that they cannot be self-aware “without an understanding of the history of medicine in the past century.” If they ignore history, he warns, bioethics will be unable to situate “the moral dilemmas it chooses to elucidate.” Bioethics will become a “self-absorbed technology, mirroring and eventually legitimating that self-absorbed and all-consuming technology it seeks to order and understand”(1). His advice speaks to the vital role that history should generally play in the bioethical enterprise. But how and if history, as an academic discipline, did or could assist the flourishing of bioethics—a central concern of this anthology—is a question about which history, as an academic discipline, could be rather indifferent. For even if bioethics were to fade away, its three-tofour decade existence is still a fascinating topic, historically speaking. How did it come to be, Why did it last only as long as it did, and Why did it decline? are just a few of the larger questions that could inspire historical speculation and research for generations. For chroniclers, accounting for how and why bioethics declined would be as irresistible a project as explanting its genesis and growth.
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Notes and References
Charles E. Rosenberg. (1999, Fall) Meanings, Policies, and Medicine: On the Bioethics Enterprise and History, in Daedalus, vol. 128, no. 4. See pp. 27–46. Rosenberg’ s warning includes the importance of heeding lessons from sociological ethnographies and politics as well.
Of course, what constitutes origins can be debated. (See below.)
Rosenberg, p. 38.
Of Fox’s work, see especially, “The Sociology of Bioethics,” in Renee Fox, The Sociology of Medicine: A Participant Observer’s View. (1989) Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ . For her assessment of how bioethics has developed, see, “The Entry of U.S. Bioethics into the 1990s,” in A Matter of Principles: Ferment in US Bioethics. (1994) Trinity Press International, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; and “Is Medical Education Asking Too Much of Bioethics?”, in Daedalus. (1999, Fall) Vol. 128, no. 4, pp. 1–25. See also,</i> “Advanced Medical Technology: Social and Ethical Implications,” (1976) Annual Review of Sociology 2; and, Fox with Judith P. Swazey, (1988) “Medical Morality is Not Bioethics: Medical Ethics in China and the United States,” in Essays in Medical Sociology. (ed. Renee C. Fox) New Brunswick, NJ.
Fox (1989), pp. 224, 225.
Fox (1989), p. 225.
Fox (1989), pp. 230, 231.
Fox (1989), pp. 229–234.
Fox (1989), p. 233.
Rothman engaged Fox’s 1976 and 1988 articles while I drew my summary of Fox’s critique from her 1989 article. As such, my comparison of their views here is based on my assessment of their works independently, as well as constituting a report of their engagement of each others ideas. (See note 5 for a list of articles by Renee Fox.)
Fox (1989), p. 233 citing (1986) personal letter from Ruel Tyson, Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
David J. Rothman. (1991) Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making. Basic Books, p. 246.
Rothman, p. 245.
See M. L. Tina Stevens (2000) Bioethics in America: Origins and Cultural Politics. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 38–41.
Jonsen, p. 387.
Albert R. Jonsen. The Birth of Bioethics Oxford University Press, New York, p. xii.
Jonsen, Chapter. 5, especially pp. 137, 140, 148.
M. L. Tina Stevens (2000) Bioethics in America: Origins and Cultural Politics Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.
T. J. Jackson Lears. No Place of Grace: Antimodemism and the Transformation of American Culture:1880–1920. (1981) Pantheon Books, New York„ pp. 57, 58.
Rosenberg, pp. 37–38.
Alvin Toffler. (1971) Future Shock. Bantam Books, New York, p. 2.
Historically, related social phenomena may be the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries, if those developments are understood as psycho-social responses to challenges presented by rapid social change occurring within the more religious context of early American society. Also, perhaps not unrelated to the idea of bioethics functioning as a social coping strategy, is Joseph Campbell’ s observation that contemporary society is moving too fast to develop or adhere to a mythology capable of making existence comprehensible. See Apostrophe S Productions, et al. (1988) Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers.
Terri Peterson. (2001, June 6) Book Review of “Bioethics in America.” JAMA Vol. 285, no. 21.
See Stevens, pp. 30, 31 for more general discussion.
Rosenberg, p. 40.
“The Sociology of Bioethics,” in Renee Fox, The Sociology of Medicine: A Participant Observer’s View. (1989) Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, p. 226.
Daniel Callahan. (1997, Apr) “Bioethics and the Culture Wars,” in The Nation, p. 24.
5ee for example, Paul Root Wolpe. (1998) “The Triumph of Autonomy in American Bioethics: A Sociological View,” in Bioethics and Society: Constructing the Ethical Enterprise. Prentice Hall, Inc, NJ, pp. 38–59.
Raymond DeVries and Peter Conrad. (1998) “Why Bioethics Needs Sociology,” in Bioethics and Society: Constructing the Ethical Enterprise. Prentice Hall, Inc, NJ„ p. 236. Other essays in this volume emphasize the importance of ethnographic studies
See also, Arthur Kleinman. (1999, Fall) “Moral Experience and Ethical Reflection: Can Ethnography Reconcile Them? A Quandary for ’The New Bioethics,’” in Daedalus, Vol. 128, no. 4, pp. 69— 97. Charles Bosk suggests, however, that “ethnographies. ..may very well cut against the objectives of bioethicists. There may be a built-in incompatibility between bioethical and sociological inquiry, and heightening this tension rather than attempting to deny it may very well be a useful contribution of the social scientists to bioethics.” See his, “Professional Ethicists Available: Logical, Secular, Friendly,” in Daedalus, (1999 Fall), Vol. 128, no. 4, pp. 47–68 at p. 65. See also, Arthur Kleinman, “Moral Experience and Ethical Reflection: Can Ethnography ReconcileThem? A Quandary for ’The New Bioethics,’“ in Daedalus, (1999, Fall), Vol. 128, no. 4, pp. 69–97. Another relevant volume is Barry Hoffmaster, ed., (2001, Fall) Bioethics in Social Context, pp. 69–97.
Rosenberg, p. 35.
Jonsen, pp. 334–338.
For example, see, Stevens, p. 52; Jonsen, p. 386.
Langdon Winner. (1986) The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, See also, Andrew Feenberg. (1999) Questioning Technology. Routledge Press, London and New York.
Callahan. (1997) Bioethics and the Culture Wars, p. 24.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg (2001) “Bioethicists Find Themselves The Ones Being Scrutinized,” in The New York Times, August 2, p. 1.
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Stevens, M.L.T. (2003). History and Bioethics. In: Miller, F.G., Fletcher, J.C., Humber, J.M. (eds) The Nature and Prospect of Bioethics. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-370-5_7
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