Thomasine K. Kushner

The Role of Institutional and Community Based Ethics Committees in the Debate on Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide

In many countries the debate over the role that physicians may (or should) play in ending life has been limited to the judiciary and other law making institutions, professional medical organizations; and academics. Because of their multidisciplinary and diverse membership, ethics committees may be a particularly appropriate venue through which these discussions can be expanded to include a much larger community. In addition, ethics committees generally act in only advisory capacities because they do not actually make decisions, so they may provide a forum for open discussions in ways that the court and the medical boards (which make licensing determinations) cannot.

From the Editors: Clinical Neuroethics: From Bench to Bedside . . . and Beyond

Although fi rst used by Anneliese Pontius, 1 the term “neuroethics” gained more widespread use in 2002, based in part on the late William Safi re’s address at a Dana Foundation conference devoted to ethical issues in the brain sciences. 2 Thus, we may look to 2002 as something of the formal birth of the fi eld. In this light, we can describe neuroethics’ fi rst decade (i.e., 2002–2012) as a period of establishing its turf, tasks, and tentative identity. During that time, the fi eld grew in ardent strides through the work of a growing cadre of dedicated scholars, the development of a number of academic programs, and an expanding body of literature, all focusing on key issues and questions spawned by neuroscientifi c research, and the various uses—and misuses—of new techniques and technologies. 3

From the editor: a personal coda.

The Cambridge Consortium for Bioethics Education took place at the Cambridge University Press offices in New York this April. Hosted and sponsored by the Press, with cosponsors, CQ and the Program in Medicine & Human Values at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, the Consortium brought together representative leaders in bioethics to discuss some of the unsolved issues in the field: goals, curriculum, methods, and assessment. For three days participants shared their own programs, research, and current projects as well as ideas on where bioethics education needs to go in the future. Beginning with this special section, and in CQ ’s Bioethics Education section in subsequent volumes, we will be bringing you what is happening as bioethicists everywhere take a more focused approach to the field.