From the Chair

One of the primary responsibilities of the Philosophy and Medicine Committee is to provide interesting and timely programs for each of the APA divisional meetings. We think we have been reasonably successful in this regard, but there is always room for improvement. We have dedicated and creative committee members who have provided the ideas and organizational skill necessary to bring our programs to fruition. But there is always room for broader input from members of the profession who have bioethics/philosophy and medicine among their areas of philosophic specialization. So I want to take this opportunity to invite ideas from all my readers for future programs. There are lots of kinds of ideas you might suggest. Let me provide some general examples in the hope that this will spark particular suggestions from you.

Important New Books in Bioethics: We do in fact have in mind a particular future program that would fall under this rubric. The general idea is that we would have a panel of critics followed by a response from the author(s). The particular book we have in mind is From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, by Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels, and Dan Wikler (Cambridge University Press). All four of these individuals are very well known and respected, both as philosophical bioethicists and as philosophers. The topic that they address is in a very rapidly growing area of bioethics (genetics). Their particular angle on the topic, issues of health care justice, is one that has not received that much attention in the philosophic or bioethics literature. And their approach to this issue connects up well with traditional areas of concern in philosophy (theories of justice), which means we can hope to entice a more interesting mix of philosophers to our session. Would any of you, dear readers, care to suggest other such volumes that might be the focus of one of our programs?

I should add that it does not necessarily have to be a book that would be the focus of one of these symposium sessions. It could just as well be a policy report or a very significant journal article. There are reports from the National Bioethics Advisory Council [NBAC], and other such comparable bodies, that may warrant a sustained critical appraisal of the sort that can be provided in one of our sessions. As far as journal articles are concerned, I was impressed by a long essay that Norman Daniels and James Sabin did a couple years ago in Philosophy and Public Affairs (1997), "Limits to Health Care: Fair Procedures, Democratic Deliberation, and the Legitimacy Problem for Insurers." Apart from contributing to the discussion of the health care rationing problem, that essay connected up well with a number of other important problem areas in social and political philosophy, which is to suggest it would contribute to our having a richer session.

Important Emerging Issues in Bioethics/Philosophy of Medicine: One of the sociological facts about bioethics is that there is enormous intellectual ferment in the field, driven in part by emerging medical technologies and changing economic and organizational arrangements in the field of health care itself. Some of these changes may be too specific and too technical to prove attractive enough to be the focus of a program that we would sponsor. But there are somewhat broader topics that are getting increasing scientific and political attention that also deserve philosophic scrutiny. The example I have in mind would be the range of scientific breakthroughs that would be gathered under the rubric of behavioral genetics. There are clearly moral and political issues related to behavioral genetics worthy of serious philosophic inquiry, but there are also issues related to the philosophy of science and philosophy of mind that are provoked by these advances. Hence, that is to my mind the sort of topic that we want to find for our future sessions.

Traditional Issues in Bioethics/Philosophy of Medicine: In the past several years we have done a couple programs that addressed issues related to euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide. What justified going back to these issues (and doing something more than re-hashing old arguments) were things that happened in the world, i.e., the US Supreme Court Decision that addressed this issue, including the fact that there was The Philosopher’s Brief that was part of that legal event. Again, part of what allowed for a very stimulating discussion of this case was that we were doing more than ethics. We had to explore a number of issues in the philosophy of law and in social political philosophy. My question to readers is: Do you see other "long-established" issues in bioethics that deserve to be re-visited because there has been a sudden resurgence of intellectual interest in the issue as a result of some novel perspective?

We have also co-sponsored programs with other standing committees of APA. If you have suggestions for topics that would warrant such joint efforts, we welcome those suggestions. At the end of this column I will list all the current members of our committee, along with their e-mail addresses. You should feel free to write to any of them with your suggestions for program topics or program presenters. More generally, we are open to any suggestions for projects you believe this Committee ought to undertake under the auspices of the APA.

In closing I would like to call your attention to a couple resources you might have missed. The philosophers I am speaking to are those who have bioethics as only one area of specialization/philosophic competence they must maintain as part of their academic role. The philosophers I do not have in mind are those, like myself, who devote about 80% of our intellectual energies (research and teaching) to bioethics and health care policy. There are journals we in this latter group read faithfully that others in the prior group might miss. The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal is one such journal I have in mind. That journal has as a regular feature what they call "Scope Note," which are timely bibliographic updates in one area of medical ethics. In the June (2000) issue Scope Note 38 is devoted to "Bioethics Resources on the Web." You may find this helpful. Another journal I would mention is the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. I read this journal regularly because of my policy interests. Most folks in bioethics might not have occasion to take note of this journal. However, they did do something quite out of character in their April (2000) issue. They have a very large (53pp) book review symposium on physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. This is a very useful resource for becoming quickly acquainted with some of the more recent focal points of debate in that issue area. The books reviewed include: Asking to Die: Inside the Dutch Debate about Euthanasia, edited by David Thomasma and others; A Time to Die: The Place for Physician Assistance by Charles McKhann; Euthanasia and the Law in the Netherlands by John Griffiths and others; Regulating How We Die: The Ethical, Legal, and Medical Issues Surrounding Physician-Assisted Suicide, edited by Linda Emanuel; Physician-Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate, edited by Margaret Pabst Battin, Rosamond Rhodes, and Anita Silvers; and Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: For and Against, by Gerald Dworkin, R.G. Frey, and Sissela Bok.