Faculty Bibliography

When you get old enough as a practitioner in any field young people seek your advice about what they should do if they want to do what you do. Given that my age seems to be increasing exponentially, this has been happening to me with increasing frequency. Undergraduates, high school students, medical students, those pursuing degrees in law and nursing and even those interested in a mid-career change have been asking me what they need to do if they want to pursue a career in bioethics. I have thought about their question quite a bit. I have come to realize that the answer is not the same for everyone who presents the question. But, the core of the answer is pretty much the same: pursue masters level training in bioethics, acquire familiarity with key social science methods and tools, learn something about a particular sub-area of the health sciences or life sciences, and seek out every opportunity to fine tune your analytical and rhetorical skills by working with others on projects, research, consulting, or teaching activities. At its heart bioethics is an interdisciplinary activity and knowing how to work with others who do empirical, historical, legal and normative work is a must. I had thought that advice to be sound until I heard Zeke Emanuel's plenary address to open the most recent annual meeting of the American Society of Bioethics and the Humanities. Emanuel espoused a vision for future bioethicists that I think is narrow, misguided and wrong. Now I say that in the spirit that Emanuel himself enjoys—vigorous debate about a matter that both of us consider of the gravest importance. Zeke Emanuel, a physician with a degree in political science as well, is one of the best and brightest scholars in the field of bioethics. His writings are solid and exemplify how best to integrate empirical inquiry with normative analysis. And the 'shop' he has run at the NIH Clinical Center for many years prior to moving into the Office of Budget and Management to work on health reform has done an outstanding job training younger scholars in the ins and outs of bioethical inquiry. These facts are precisely why the recent plenary address to the American Society of Bioethics and the Humanities was so disappointing.

The aggressive exploration of genetics and bioengineering is warranted not just because of the huge potential for positive benefit for humanity, but also because the work informs in important ways our sense of place in the universe. Synthetic biology is an example of just the kind of power that cutting edge research in the biological sciences exerts on the worldview we hold as to our place in nature and the nature of life itself