01
Research Ethics & Human Experimentation
Who may be enrolled in research, under what conditions, and with whose consent?
Ideas & Debates
The questions that shaped American bioethics
American bioethics developed through disagreement: about the authority of medicine, the rights of patients and research participants, the meaning of justice, the boundaries of life and death, and the social consequences of new technologies.
Explore some of the enduring questions and controversies through the people, events, works, and institutions that shaped them.
02
Patient Authority & Medical Decision-Making
Who should decide when patients, families, and clinicians disagree about medical care?
03
Death, Dying & the Boundaries of Life
How should medicine and society understand death, life-sustaining treatment, and decisions at the end of life?
04
Justice, Race & Health Inequality
How have questions of fairness, exclusion, access, and structural inequality challenged American bioethics?
05
Reproduction & Reproductive Authority
Who exercises authority over reproductive decisions, and how have medicine, law, gender, and social power shaped those choices?
06
Disability & Bioethics
How have disability perspectives challenged assumptions about quality of life, dependency, normality, and medical decision-making?
07
Biotechnology, Genetics & Human Futures
How should emerging biological technologies be governed when their possibilities and consequences remain uncertain?
08
Scarcity, Allocation & Access to Care
How should limited medical resources, organs, technologies, and healthcare itself be distributed?