Union College’s Everyday Ethics Across the Curriculum project was initiated in 2006 and immediate... more Union College’s Everyday Ethics Across the Curriculum project was initiated in 2006 and immediately became a vital presence on campus, funding over one hundred ethics course segments or stand-alone ethics courses in departments other than Philosophy, over one hundred lunchtime workshops, symposia and other events, and a program of outside speakers running the gamut from white-collar felons to eminent historians of the Holocaust. Among those featured were Kwame Anthony Appiah (Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers and Honor Code), Stephanie Bird (editor of the journal, Science and Engineering Ethics), Bernard Gert (Morality and Common Morality), and Eyal Press (Beautiful Souls). The initiative played a pivotal role the development of the college’s honor code and also hosted four national conferences. It caught the attention of the Chronicle for Higher Education, (Union College Website: https://www.union.edu/news/stories/2011/07/the-challenge-of-putting-a-grade-on-ethical-le...
“Race” is a four-letter word. Like other four-letter words, and like its own six-letter sibling, ... more “Race” is a four-letter word. Like other four-letter words, and like its own six-letter sibling, “racism,” it is seldom uttered in polite society—or in bioethical discourse. Bioethicists prefer to ...
The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics, 2008
INTRODUCTION This chapter's title is an interrogative: “What is the history of medical ethics... more INTRODUCTION This chapter's title is an interrogative: “What is the history of medical ethics?” Readers perusing the table of contents might be prompted to ask precisely this question. The expected chronological account seems hidden behind a facade of unfamiliar rhetoric about discourses, life cycles, and society. Our approach reflects a new era of scholarship on the history of medical ethics. Because readers may not be cognizant of the new scholarship, we introduce this volume with a chapter exploring the history of the history of medical ethics and the reasons why scholars have begun to take new approaches to the subject. HOW OLD IS “MEDICAL ETHICS”? Histories have to begin somewhere. The expression “medical ethics” was not coined until 1803, when Thomas Percival (1740–1804), a physician from Manchester, England, introduced it in his eponymous book Medical Ethics (Percival 1803b) as a description of the professional duties of physicians and surgeons to their patients, to their fellow practitioners, and to the public (see Chapters 18 and 36). As Percival was the first person to use the expression medical ethics, there is a sense in which the history of something designated medical ethics cannot predate 1803. Most historians, however, treat the history of medical ethics as coextensive with the history of medicine. They presume that it does not matter when the expression medical ethics was coined. As Juliet famously remarked, “What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
I was the graduate student that Albert Jonsen so aptly describes. Bronx born and educated at the ... more I was the graduate student that Albert Jonsen so aptly describes. Bronx born and educated at the City College of New York, I emigrated to the Midwest to study at the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science, where May Brodbeck, Herbert Feigl and other “logical positivists” were engaging in an ongoing dialogue with postpositivists like Paul Feyerabend and Karl Popper. In this environment, I studied philosophy of science, epistemology, and metaethics—the epistemology and logic of ethical concepts and language. I even wrote my thesis on the ur-text of the metaethical turn, G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica. Then, like other epistemologists and metaethicists, “a public disaster, the American military involvement in Southeast Asia,” as well as the burgeoning civil rights movement, drew me into the sphere of public debate.
It's a large authoritative-looking green book with gold lettering on the cover and spine, abo... more It's a large authoritative-looking green book with gold lettering on the cover and spine, about the size of standard piece of stationary but as thick as phone book. Weighing in at around 4 pounds, it took a team of two editors working with 56 authors from 20 countries during the course of 12 years to write the 63 chapters that fill the 876 dual-column encyclopedia-like pages that make up The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics. One of the first things readers will find in the book is a 77-page "Chronology of Medical Ethics." As historians, we sought to offer clinicians, bioethicists — everyone, in fact — a sense of historical context in which events occurred, texts were written and policies implemented. The Chronology, with its multi-column representation of events, people, texts and policies graphically presents this context, showing as well as telling what happened when. We started the Chronology in 4,000 BCE, the date of the first known cities which, if you ta...
Philosophy textbooks typically treat bioethics as a form of &... more Philosophy textbooks typically treat bioethics as a form of "applied ethics"-i.e., an attempt to apply a moral theory, like utilitarianism, to controversial ethical issues in biology and medicine. Historians, however, can find virtually no cases in which applied philosophical moral theory influenced ethical practice in biology or medicine. In light of the absence of historical evidence, the authors of this paper advance an alternative model of the historical relationship between philosophical ethics and medical ethics, the appropriation model. They offer two historical case studies to illustrate the ways in which physicians have "appropriated" concepts and theory fragments from philosophers, and demonstrate how appropriated moral philosophy profoundly influenced the way medical morality was conceived and practiced.
RÉSUMÉ Comme l'ensemble de la nation, la médecine organisée aux Etats-Unis porte un legs de ... more RÉSUMÉ Comme l'ensemble de la nation, la médecine organisée aux Etats-Unis porte un legs de biais et de ségrégation raciales qui devrait être compris et reconnu. Pendant plus de 100 ans, beaucoup d'états et de sociétés médicales locales ont ouvertement exercé une ...
Journal of the National Medical Association, Jun 1, 2009
Between 1910 and 1968, the National Medical Association (NMA) repeatedly clashed with the America... more Between 1910 and 1968, the National Medical Association (NMA) repeatedly clashed with the American Medical Association (AMA) over the latter organization's racial bars to membership and other health policy issues. The NMA, founded in 1895 as a nonexclusionary medical society to provide a voice for disenfranchised black physicians and patients, struggled in its early years, during which AMA leadership took scant notice of it. But skirmishes ensued over such actions as stigmatizing racial labels in the AMA's American ...
Union College’s Everyday Ethics Across the Curriculum project was initiated in 2006 and immediate... more Union College’s Everyday Ethics Across the Curriculum project was initiated in 2006 and immediately became a vital presence on campus, funding over one hundred ethics course segments or stand-alone ethics courses in departments other than Philosophy, over one hundred lunchtime workshops, symposia and other events, and a program of outside speakers running the gamut from white-collar felons to eminent historians of the Holocaust. Among those featured were Kwame Anthony Appiah (Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers and Honor Code), Stephanie Bird (editor of the journal, Science and Engineering Ethics), Bernard Gert (Morality and Common Morality), and Eyal Press (Beautiful Souls). The initiative played a pivotal role the development of the college’s honor code and also hosted four national conferences. It caught the attention of the Chronicle for Higher Education, (Union College Website: https://www.union.edu/news/stories/2011/07/the-challenge-of-putting-a-grade-on-ethical-le...
“Race” is a four-letter word. Like other four-letter words, and like its own six-letter sibling, ... more “Race” is a four-letter word. Like other four-letter words, and like its own six-letter sibling, “racism,” it is seldom uttered in polite society—or in bioethical discourse. Bioethicists prefer to ...
The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics, 2008
INTRODUCTION This chapter's title is an interrogative: “What is the history of medical ethics... more INTRODUCTION This chapter's title is an interrogative: “What is the history of medical ethics?” Readers perusing the table of contents might be prompted to ask precisely this question. The expected chronological account seems hidden behind a facade of unfamiliar rhetoric about discourses, life cycles, and society. Our approach reflects a new era of scholarship on the history of medical ethics. Because readers may not be cognizant of the new scholarship, we introduce this volume with a chapter exploring the history of the history of medical ethics and the reasons why scholars have begun to take new approaches to the subject. HOW OLD IS “MEDICAL ETHICS”? Histories have to begin somewhere. The expression “medical ethics” was not coined until 1803, when Thomas Percival (1740–1804), a physician from Manchester, England, introduced it in his eponymous book Medical Ethics (Percival 1803b) as a description of the professional duties of physicians and surgeons to their patients, to their fellow practitioners, and to the public (see Chapters 18 and 36). As Percival was the first person to use the expression medical ethics, there is a sense in which the history of something designated medical ethics cannot predate 1803. Most historians, however, treat the history of medical ethics as coextensive with the history of medicine. They presume that it does not matter when the expression medical ethics was coined. As Juliet famously remarked, “What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
I was the graduate student that Albert Jonsen so aptly describes. Bronx born and educated at the ... more I was the graduate student that Albert Jonsen so aptly describes. Bronx born and educated at the City College of New York, I emigrated to the Midwest to study at the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science, where May Brodbeck, Herbert Feigl and other “logical positivists” were engaging in an ongoing dialogue with postpositivists like Paul Feyerabend and Karl Popper. In this environment, I studied philosophy of science, epistemology, and metaethics—the epistemology and logic of ethical concepts and language. I even wrote my thesis on the ur-text of the metaethical turn, G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica. Then, like other epistemologists and metaethicists, “a public disaster, the American military involvement in Southeast Asia,” as well as the burgeoning civil rights movement, drew me into the sphere of public debate.
It's a large authoritative-looking green book with gold lettering on the cover and spine, abo... more It's a large authoritative-looking green book with gold lettering on the cover and spine, about the size of standard piece of stationary but as thick as phone book. Weighing in at around 4 pounds, it took a team of two editors working with 56 authors from 20 countries during the course of 12 years to write the 63 chapters that fill the 876 dual-column encyclopedia-like pages that make up The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics. One of the first things readers will find in the book is a 77-page "Chronology of Medical Ethics." As historians, we sought to offer clinicians, bioethicists — everyone, in fact — a sense of historical context in which events occurred, texts were written and policies implemented. The Chronology, with its multi-column representation of events, people, texts and policies graphically presents this context, showing as well as telling what happened when. We started the Chronology in 4,000 BCE, the date of the first known cities which, if you ta...
Philosophy textbooks typically treat bioethics as a form of &... more Philosophy textbooks typically treat bioethics as a form of "applied ethics"-i.e., an attempt to apply a moral theory, like utilitarianism, to controversial ethical issues in biology and medicine. Historians, however, can find virtually no cases in which applied philosophical moral theory influenced ethical practice in biology or medicine. In light of the absence of historical evidence, the authors of this paper advance an alternative model of the historical relationship between philosophical ethics and medical ethics, the appropriation model. They offer two historical case studies to illustrate the ways in which physicians have "appropriated" concepts and theory fragments from philosophers, and demonstrate how appropriated moral philosophy profoundly influenced the way medical morality was conceived and practiced.
RÉSUMÉ Comme l'ensemble de la nation, la médecine organisée aux Etats-Unis porte un legs de ... more RÉSUMÉ Comme l'ensemble de la nation, la médecine organisée aux Etats-Unis porte un legs de biais et de ségrégation raciales qui devrait être compris et reconnu. Pendant plus de 100 ans, beaucoup d'états et de sociétés médicales locales ont ouvertement exercé une ...
Journal of the National Medical Association, Jun 1, 2009
Between 1910 and 1968, the National Medical Association (NMA) repeatedly clashed with the America... more Between 1910 and 1968, the National Medical Association (NMA) repeatedly clashed with the American Medical Association (AMA) over the latter organization's racial bars to membership and other health policy issues. The NMA, founded in 1895 as a nonexclusionary medical society to provide a voice for disenfranchised black physicians and patients, struggled in its early years, during which AMA leadership took scant notice of it. But skirmishes ensued over such actions as stigmatizing racial labels in the AMA's American ...
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