Roberta M. Berry

The Absent Professor: Why We Don't Teach Research Ethics and What to Do about It

Research ethics education in the biosciences has not historically been a priority for research universities despite the fact that funding agencies, government regulators, and the parties involved in the research enterprise agree that it ought to be. The confluence of a number of factors, including scrutiny and regulation due to increased public awareness of the impact of basic research on society, increased public and private funding, increased diversity and collaboration among researchers, the impressive success and speed of research advances, and high-profile cases of misconduct, have made it necessary to reexamine how the bioscience research community at all levels provides ethics education to its own. We discuss the need to and reasons for making ethics integral to the education of bioscientists, approaches to achieving this goal, challenges this goal presents, and responses to those challenges.

Contentious Problems in Bioscience and Biotechnology: A Pilot Study of an Approach to Ethics Education

This manuscript describes a pilot study in ethics education employing a problem-based learning approach to the study of novel, complex, ethically fraught, unavoidably public, and unavoidably divisive policy problems, called “fractious problems,” in bioscience and biotechnology. Diverse graduate and professional students from four US institutions and disciplines spanning science, engineering, humanities, social science, law, and medicine analyzed fractious problems employing “navigational skills” tailored to the distinctive features of these problems. The students presented their results to policymakers, stakeholders, experts, and members of the public. This approach may provide a model for educating future bioscientists and bioengineers so that they can meaningfully contribute to the social understanding and resolution of challenging policy problems generated by their work.

A Small Bioethical World

This essay discusses four challenges posed to a global bioethics by articles on: divergent national policies on compensation of egg donors for IVF, efforts to advance the development of international guidelines for the management of neonates on the edge of viability, bioethics training workshops in Uganda, a bioethicist’s reflection on a visit to Pakistan. The article then discusses several approaches to developing a global bioethics and how these approaches might meet the four challenges. The essay concludes with discussion of the author’s development of a “navigational approach” to policymaking for “fractious” bioethical policy problems and how this compares to other approaches to developing a global bioethics.

Recent Developments in Health Care Law: Culture and Controversy

This article reviews recent developments in health care law, focusing on controversy at the intersection of health care law and culture. The article addresses: emerging issues in federal regulatory oversight of the rapidly developing market in direct-to-consumer genetic testing, including questions about the role of government oversight and professional mediation of consumer choice; continuing controversies surrounding stem cell research and therapies and the implications of these controversies for healthcare institutions; a controversy in India arising at the intersection of abortion law and the rights of the disabled but implicating a broader set of cross-cultural issues; and the education of U.S. health care providers and lawyers in the theory and practice of cultural competency.

Unraveling the Codes: The Dialectic Between Knowledge of the Moral Person and Knowledge of the Genetic Person in Criminal Law

The criminal code is both enduring and fragile. The reasons it is bound to endure, in some form, are obvious. We cannot hope to conduct our lives in community without some minimal assurance of safety and public order. We are, unavoidably, social beings, and our lives in community require that we protect ourselves against unwarranted force, unjustified deception, and all the other ways in which harm can be done to our basic interests. Whatever else we might say about the criminal code, we surely would agree that it was invented and sustained to serve this core purpose. It is no wonder that it endures.

Recent Developments in Health Care Law: Partners in Innovation

This article reviews recent developments in health care law, focusing on the engagement of law as a partner in health care innovation. The article addresses: the history and contents of recent United States federal law restricting the use of genetic information by insurers and employers; the recent federal policy recommending routine HIV testing; the recent revision of federal policy regarding the funding of human embryonic stem cell research; the history, current status, and need for future attention to advance directives; the recent emergence of medical–legal partnerships and their benefits for patients; the obesity epidemic and its implications for the child’s right to health under international conventions.