ABP AMERICANBIOETHICS PROJECT

Items

• Warren T. Reich — Founding member of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics

  Warren T. Reich was a founding member of Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics in 1971.
• Tom L. Beauchamp — Staff member of the National Commission

  Tom L. Beauchamp served on the staff of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.
• Ruth Faden — Chair of ACHRE

  Ruth Faden chaired the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments during its 1994–1995 inquiry.
• Willard Gaylin — President of The Hastings Center

  Willard Gaylin served as president of The Hastings Center from its inception in 1969 until 1983.
• Ezekiel J. Emanuel — First chief of the NIH Clinical Center Department of Bioethics

  Ezekiel J. Emanuel was the first chief of the NIH Clinical Center Department of Bioethics from 1997 to 2011.
• Robert J. Levine — Consultant to the National Commission

  Robert J. Levine served as a consultant to the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.
• Jonathan D. Moreno — Senior policy and research analyst for ACHRE

  Jonathan D. Moreno served as a senior policy and research analyst on the staff of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments during 1994–1995.
• André E. Hellegers — Founding director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics

  André E. Hellegers founded the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and served as its first director beginning in 1971.
• Willard Gaylin — Cofounder of The Hastings Center

  Willard Gaylin co-founded The Hastings Center, originally the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, with Daniel Callahan in 1969.
• The Birth of Bioethics

  Jonsen’s history follows American bioethics from postwar research ethics through genetics, transplantation, death and dying, reproduction, government commissions, and the formation of a recognizable field. Drawing on archives and interviews, he described how theologians, philosophers, lawyers, social scientists, physicians, and public bodies entered moral questions once governed mainly within medicine.
• Disability, Difference, Discrimination: Perspectives on Justice in Bioethics and Public Policy

  Silvers, Wasserman, and Mahowald brought different theories of justice to disability policy and bioethics after the Americans with Disabilities Act. Their arguments addressed discrimination, genetic selection, treatment of disabled newborns, assisted death, independence, and the social organization of disability.
• Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

  Roberts situated contemporary disputes about reproduction within a history of slavery, coerced sterilization, welfare policy, prosecution of pregnant women, and racialized images of Black motherhood. She argued that reproductive liberty cannot be understood only as freedom from government interference; it also requires the social conditions needed to bear and raise children.
• Transcultural Nursing Ethics: A Framework and Model for Transcultural Ethical Analysis

  Marilyn A. Ray developed a model for ethical analysis in clinical encounters shaped by cultural difference. The framework combined caring practices, ethical principles, social values, and spiritual or religious beliefs, while treating interaction itself as transcultural rather than assuming a neutral clinical norm.
• The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation

  Edited by Annas and Grodin, this collection placed the Nuremberg Code within the history of Nazi medicine, the Doctors’ Trial, international law, and contemporary research ethics. Its contributors examined both the Code’s origins and the uneven course of its reception in the United States.
• Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making

  Rothman traced the decline of medicine’s largely self-regulating authority from the postwar expansion of human experimentation through research scandals, new federal rules, court decisions, and bedside controversies. His “strangers” include lawyers, judges, philosophers, regulators, and lay participants who entered decisions once treated as the physician’s domain.
• Global Bioethics: Building on the Leopold Legacy

  Potter returned to the expansive meaning of bioethics he had proposed in the early 1970s and connected human health to ecological survival, population, and the ethical use of biological knowledge. Building on Aldo Leopold, he argued that medical bioethics and ecological ethics should be understood within a single global framework.
• For the Patient's Good: The Restoration of Beneficence in Health Care

  Pellegrino and Thomasma responded to the conflict between medical paternalism and an autonomy understood mainly as patient control. They proposed “beneficence-in-trust,” an account in which clinical judgment, the patient’s values, and the moral commitments of the healing relationship jointly define the patient’s good.
• The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning

  Jonsen and Toulmin recovered casuistry from its reputation as clever rationalization by reconstructing a tradition of reasoning from paradigmatic cases, circumstances, and moral maxims. Their history followed the method from antiquity through medieval and early modern moral theology and argued for its revival in contemporary practical ethics.
• The Foundations of Bioethics

  Engelhardt offered a systematic and deliberately controversial account of secular bioethics in a morally plural society. He argued that people divided by fundamental moral commitments cannot appeal to one content-rich morality as a common authority.
• A History and Theory of Informed Consent

  Faden and Beauchamp combined historical research with philosophical analysis to explain how informed consent developed in clinical medicine, research regulation, and law. They distinguished autonomous authorization from the institutional rules and disclosure practices commonly called informed consent, then examined understanding, voluntariness, competence, and manipulation.
• Just Health Care

  Daniels recast access to health care as a problem of justice rather than charity or consumer preference. Drawing on Rawlsian political philosophy, he argued that disease and disability restrict people’s normal range of opportunities and that protecting fair opportunity provides a basis for assigning special importance to health needs.
• Deciding to Forego Life-Sustaining Treatment: A Report on the Ethical, Medical, and Legal Issues in Treatment Decisions

  This federal commission report addressed decisions about cardiopulmonary resuscitation, artificial nutrition and hydration, treatment of seriously ill newborns, and care for patients unable to decide for themselves. It argued that competent patients may refuse life-sustaining treatment and that surrogate decisions should attend to the patient’s own values and welfare.
• A Theory of Medical Ethics

  Robert Veatch challenged the idea that the medical profession could define its own ethics through inherited codes and professional traditions. He proposed a covenantal account grounded in agreements between medicine and the wider moral community, then developed principles governing autonomy, honesty, justice, contract keeping, and the avoidance of killing.
• Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

  Jean Watson’s first major book developed caring as a central intellectual and practical commitment of nursing rather than a sentimental addition to technical treatment. Her “carative factors” connected clinical knowledge with attention, trust, meaning, and the relationship between nurse and patient.
• Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting with Human Subjects

  Jonas wrote amid growing scrutiny of research practices and shortly after Beecher’s public criticism of unethical clinical studies. He argued that scientific progress does not create an unlimited claim on human beings and that investigators must respect the subject’s freedom, dignity, and vulnerability.