A Roadmap for Health Care Accountability

Abstract

theologians in the late 1970s and early 1980s encouraged their colleagues to distance themselves from practical bioethics. That is, Evans accounts for theological marginalization in terms of jurisdictional competition (and defeat at the hands of bioethicists) rather than what he alludes to in one sentence, but does not explore-a crisis in theology. Evans' narrative of the origins of bioethics as a profession is very compressed, and I think does not do justice to what bioethics has taken to be its defining hallmark: what Daniel Callahan described long ago as interdisciplinarity. That understanding of a plurality of perspectives, voices, and methods simply isn't compatible with Evans' analytical lens of jurisdiction competition and power plays for political influence. s' na rative of the origins of thics as a profession is very comssed, and I think does not do justice Other questions about Evans's analysis suggest themselves at various points. There are enough that, in my view, the overall argument is far from successful. Yet it is very successful in raising fundamental questions about the professional identity and moral integrity of bioethics and bioethicists, and that in itself makes Playing God very valuable reading.