Faculty Bibliography

The various forms of protection devised by society for human subjects are examined. These are government regulation, informed consent, review at the local institutional level, and legal protection (malpractice suits). The related issue of how to define research is discussed.

KIE: This Hastings Center Report supplement is derived from the Center's three-year "Ethics and Chronic Illness" project. The project was premised on the idea that chronic illness is a distinctive experience, and that chronic care is different in nature from the acute care that is the current focus of American medicine. In our aging society, the prospect of widespread disability and chronic illness is "a spectre haunting the American health care system." The reality of chronic illness could transform many pervasive assumptions about medical goals and ethics. With this report, the authors intend to stimulate a broader discussion of the ethical issues distinctive to chronic illness, and to outline an agenda for future bioethical investigation. They also hope to articulate the rudiments of a moral vision to guide the health care system, welfare services, families, and communities as they face the challenges of providing chronic care.

Dr. [W. Dudley Johnson] is hardly the only physician to declare that the risk of contracting the deadly disease justifies excluding patients with the AIDS virus from his practice. Many medical students are unwilling to apply for residency programs in New York or San Francisco, where the incidence of people carrying the AIDS virus is unusually high. A number of transplant surgeons have refused to perform operations where the patient may be a carrier

Marrow transplants may even be more important. They could prove helpful in reversing the massive radiation injuries that would result from a nuclear holocaust or a Chernobyl-style nuclear plant catastrophe. There is even the possibility that those suffering from the horrors of AIDS may find marrow transplants helpful as such a procedure might allow the victims of this plague to replace their dysfunctional marrow cells with healthy, uninfected tissue

The Vatican says anyone who provides or seeks such testing with the intent of inducing an abortion depending on the results is committing a "gravely illicit act." It further condemns civil or health authorities who in any way favor a link between prenatal diagnosis and the option of abortion