Table of Contents

1 Front Matter; 2 Contents; 3 Executive Summary; 4 Part I; 5 1. Introduction; 6 2. The Social Context of Bioethical Problem Solving; 7 3. Systematic Approaches to Bioethics; 8 4. The Spectrum of Societal Responses; 9 5. Criteria for Success; 10 6. Conclusions and Recommendations; 11 Part II: Commissioned Papers; 12 Moral Epistemology; 13 Public Moral Discourse; 14 The Value of Consensus; 15 Bioethics Commissions: What Can We Learn from Past Successes and Failures?; 16 Limiting Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment: A Comparative Analysis of the President's Commission and the New York State Task Force; 17 The Formulation of Health Policy by the Three Branches of Government; 18 The Role of Religious Participation and Religious Belief in Biomedical Decision Making; 19 Trust, Honesty, and the Authority of Science; 20 Institutional Ethics Committees: Local Perspectives on Ethical Issues in Medicine; 21 The Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Program of the National Center for Human Genome Research: A Missed Opportunity?; 22 AIDS, Ethics, and Activism: Institutional Encounters in the Epidemic's First Decade; 23 La Penible Valse Hesitation: Fetal Tissue Research Review and the Use of Bioethics Commissions in France and the United States; 24 Appendix: Past Commissions and Advisory Boards; 25 Index

About the Author

Ruth Ellen Bulger, Elizabeth Meyer Bobby, and Harvey V. Fineberg, Editors; Committee on the Social and Ethical Impacts of Developments in Biomedicine, Institute of Medicine