The “s” in Bioethics: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

What is bioethics? Who is a bioethicist? Is bioethics an area of inquiry, a discipline, or a field? Are bioethicists members of a distinct profession? Some see bioethics as an area where individuals from different professions “meet” to inquire about ethical issues associated with science, medicine, technology, and health care. Some see bioethicists as professionals who share goals, and have specific socially recognized roles and functions for which they ought to be certified, accredited or at least bound by a code of ethics. Others hold that we ought to work toward such a state in which bioethicists are professionals with a defined and robust ethos, shared goals and perhaps even advocate for particular moral positions together through their professional organization. Each of these views proposes a particular meaning for bioethics and its practitioners. In this chapter, we first argue that such views represent a desire for bioethics to mean something very particular. Second, we argue that bioethics cannot live up to this expectation, given its history, its functional and disciplinary diversity, and so forth. In short, we demonstrate that there are multiple ways in which bioethics is plural or diverse. Each of these has implications for bioethics education and for the life of an organization such as the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). We argue that any general discussion of what it means to educate bioethicists would be comparable to having a conversation about educating teachers without specifying whether we are educating teachers who will teach particular age groups or subjects, children with special needs, and so forth. Similarly, to talk about the appropriate goals and scope of a large bioethics organization would be like discussing an organization that includes anyone who is a teacher, or even anyone who has an interest in education, e.g., public school teachers, Montessori teachers, Waldorf teachers, homeschooling parents, dance teachers, scholars who study educational systems or pedagogy and so on. Third, we argue that this diversity is to be respected and protected. The “s” in bioethics is significant not merely because it describes the current state of the enterprise but it describes an appropriate future for the enterprise.