This is an interesting question, and you’re right that I don’t really address it directly. That said, I’m not sure I totally understand how your criticism applies to the issue of whether bioethics as a field is worthwhile. Are you saying that the IRB system is bad for research, and if it weren’t for the presence of bioethicists this system wouldn’t be in place? As I said in the piece, I’m not an expert on IRBs myself, but this seems implausible to me. The IRB system is in place because of unclear and excessive guidelines, and the strong risk of liability they bring, if bioethicists disappeared, I just don’t think it would solve that. Indeed I expect IRBs themselves would march on, populated by lawyers or doctors or applied ethicists we don’t call bioethicists.
First, I think that working within a broken system know you can’t fix is bad, especially when it lends authority to the system. And second, the IRB system as it exists isn’t being condemned or opposed by bioethicists, and in fact was put in place by the Belmont Report, which was written by a bioethics expert group.
Per HHS, “The Belmont Report… is the outgrowth of an intensive four-day period of discussions that were held in February 1976 at the Smithsonian Institution’s Belmont Conference Center supplemented by the monthly deliberations of the Commission that were held over a period of nearly four years.”
Not sure who was part of the four-day discussion, but per that site, the commission included, among others:
Albert R. Jonsen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Bioethics, University of California at San Francisco.
Karen Lebacqz, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Pacific School of Religion.
A similar position to David’s might be that bioethics institutions are bad for the world, while being agnostic about academia. I don’t know much about academic bioethicists and you might be right that their papers as a whole aren’t bad for the world. But bioethics think tanks and NGOs seem terrible to me: for example, here’s a recent report I found pretty appalling (short version, 300-page version).
This is an interesting question, and you’re right that I don’t really address it directly. That said, I’m not sure I totally understand how your criticism applies to the issue of whether bioethics as a field is worthwhile. Are you saying that the IRB system is bad for research, and if it weren’t for the presence of bioethicists this system wouldn’t be in place? As I said in the piece, I’m not an expert on IRBs myself, but this seems implausible to me. The IRB system is in place because of unclear and excessive guidelines, and the strong risk of liability they bring, if bioethicists disappeared, I just don’t think it would solve that. Indeed I expect IRBs themselves would march on, populated by lawyers or doctors or applied ethicists we don’t call bioethicists.
First, I think that working within a broken system know you can’t fix is bad, especially when it lends authority to the system. And second, the IRB system as it exists isn’t being condemned or opposed by bioethicists, and in fact was put in place by the Belmont Report, which was written by a bioethics expert group.
I have heard the claim that there were no professional ethicists among the authors of the Belmont Report.
Per HHS, “The Belmont Report… is the outgrowth of an intensive four-day period of discussions that were held in February 1976 at the Smithsonian Institution’s Belmont Conference Center supplemented by the monthly deliberations of the Commission that were held over a period of nearly four years.”
Not sure who was part of the four-day discussion, but per that site, the commission included, among others:
Albert R. Jonsen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Bioethics, University of California at San Francisco.
Karen Lebacqz, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Pacific School of Religion.
A similar position to David’s might be that bioethics institutions are bad for the world, while being agnostic about academia. I don’t know much about academic bioethicists and you might be right that their papers as a whole aren’t bad for the world. But bioethics think tanks and NGOs seem terrible to me: for example, here’s a recent report I found pretty appalling (short version, 300-page version).