ABP AMERICANBIOETHICS PROJECT

Items

• A Definition of Irreversible Coma

  Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death, published in JAMA on August 5, 1968. The committee proposed irreversible coma as a new criterion for death in response to developments in life-sustaining treatment and organ transplantation.
• Nuremberg Code

  Ten principles for permissible human experimentation articulated in the judgment of the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg. The principles emphasized voluntary consent, scientific justification, proportionality of risk, avoidance of unnecessary suffering, participant withdrawal, and investigator responsibility.
• Seattle Dialysis Allocation and Patient Selection

  The Seattle Artificial Kidney Center opened in 1962 with dialysis capacity far below demand. Medically screened candidates could be referred to a lay Admissions and Policies Committee, which participated in selecting patients for scarce long-term dialysis.
• Oral Contraceptive Trials Begin in Puerto Rico

  Clinical trials of oral norethynodrel as a contraceptive began in Puerto Rico in 1956, involving Gregory Pincus, Celso-Ramón García, John Rock, Edris Rice-Wray, and Puerto Rican research participants and institutions.
• Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg

  An American military tribunal prosecuted 23 German physicians and administrators for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including criminal medical experimentation. The tribunal's judgment articulated principles for permissible human experimentation that became known as the Nuremberg Code.
• President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research

  A federal bioethics commission created by Congress in 1978, with presidential appointments announced in 1979, that operated from 1980 to 1983 and advised the President and Congress on ethical problems in medicine and biomedical and behavioral research.
• Feminist and Medical Ethics: Two Different Approaches to Contextual Ethics

  Susan Sherwin's 1989 article compared feminist ethics and medical ethics as contextual approaches while arguing that feminist political analysis changes which contextual features and power relations receive ethical attention.
• The Denver Principles

  Written in Denver in June 1983 by people with AIDS, the Denver Principles rejected passive labels, articulated rights and responsibilities, and called for people with AIDS to participate at every level of decision-making and to be included in AIDS forums as credible participants.
• Defining Death: A Report on the Medical, Legal and Ethical Issues in the Determination of Death

  The President's Commission's 1981 report examined medical, legal, and ethical questions surrounding the determination of death and recommended a uniform statutory approach recognizing irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem.
• ACT UP demonstration at the FDA

  On October 11, 1988, AIDS activists from around the United States demonstrated at the Food and Drug Administration headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, demanding faster research, development, approval, and access to AIDS treatments.
• National Organ Transplant Act

  Congress enacted the National Organ Transplant Act in 1984. The law established the framework for the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, a national registry and matching system, and prohibited the transfer of human organs for valuable consideration.
• Baby Doe controversies

  A series of disputes beginning with the 1982 Bloomington, Indiana Infant Doe case concerning treatment decisions for newborns with disabilities. Federal interventions, litigation, and subsequent legislation brought disability discrimination, parental authority, medical judgment, and quality-of-life assessments into national debate.
• A Patient's Bill of Rights

  The American Hospital Association approved its Statement of a Patient's Bill of Rights on February 6, 1973. The statement articulated expectations concerning patient information, participation in care, privacy, confidentiality, and other dimensions of the patient-hospital relationship.
• In re Quinlan

  In 1976, the Supreme Court of New Jersey decided In re Quinlan, a landmark case concerning Karen Ann Quinlan, life-sustaining treatment, guardianship, privacy, prognosis, and the withdrawal of mechanical ventilation.
• Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA

  Scientists and other participants met at the International Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California, in February 1975 to deliberate about potential hazards of recombinant DNA research and the conditions under which such research should proceed.
• Roe v. Wade

  In Roe v. Wade, decided January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution protected a qualified right to obtain an abortion and established a framework regulating state restrictions. The decision became a major legal setting for American debates over reproductive decision-making, medicine, moral status, professional authority, and the relationship between law and bioethics.
• Public revelation and termination of the USPHS Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee

  News reporting brought broad public attention to the U.S. Public Health Service study of untreated syphilis at Tuskegee; a federal advisory panel reviewed the study and recommended that it end.
• Establishment of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics

  André E. Hellegers established the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University with support from the family of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.
• Founding of The Hastings Center

  Daniel Callahan and Willard Gaylin founded the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, later known as The Hastings Center.
• No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health Care

  Susan Sherwin’s feminist analysis of health-care ethics, medical power, reproduction, patienthood, and the social structures shaping health care.
• The Belmont Report

  The National Commission’s report identifying respect for persons, beneficence, and justice as basic ethical principles for research involving human subjects.
• Principles of Biomedical Ethics

  Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress’s systematic account of biomedical ethics organized around principles including autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice.
• Encyclopedia of Bioethics

  The first edition of the multi-volume Encyclopedia of Bioethics, edited by Warren T. Reich and published by Free Press.
• Bioethics: Bridge to the Future

  Van Rensselaer Potter’s interdisciplinary work proposing bioethics as a bridge between biological knowledge and human values.
• Morals and Medicine

  Joseph Fletcher’s book on moral problems in medicine, including truth-telling, contraception, artificial insemination, sterilization, and euthanasia.