Bioethics, Medical Humanities, and the Future of the "Field": Reflections on the Results of the ASBH Survey of North American Graduate Bioethics/Medical Humanities Training Programs

Abstract

In the summer of 1999 at the annual bioethics “summer camp” in Virginia, a discussion session was held on bioethics and medical humanities graduate programs. Participants represented a wide variety of institutions and programs—small and large, thriving and struggling—with an equally wide assortment of educational offerings— certiŽcate, fellowship, M.A., and Ph.D.; traditional and web based. Some participants enthusiastically spoke of plans to launch new programs, even as others wondered aloud about the viability of their existing ones. Just as pressing were concerns and differences over what various programs prepared one to do and employment prospects for graduates. The discussion at that Virginia “summer camp” did not, of course, occur in a vacuum. It reected a broader conversation that was going on concerning the nature and direction of the “Želd” (bioethics? medical humanities? academic? clinical? profession? discipline? hybrid? reform directed? co-opted? etc.). Indeed, as early as the Žrst annual meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) in November of 1998 a motion was passed to study the growing number of training programs in bioethics and medical humanities and the implications for graduates of those programs. It was this ongoing conversation that ultimately prompted successive presidents of ASBH, Mary Faith Marshall and Laurie Zoloth, to appoint and support the ASBH Status of the Field Committee. The Committee’s Žrst project, done in cooperation with the Canadian Bioethics Society and with support from The Greenwall Foundation, was to survey graduate programs in North America that train individuals for work in bioethics or medical humanities. This special The American Journal of Bioethics forum focuses on the possible implications of the results of the ASBH Status of the Field Committee’s survey of graduate bioethics/medical humanities training programs in North America. The forum is divided into two sections. Section one consists of contributions from persons currently working in the Želd (with all due caveats, “bioethics/medical humanities”), while section two comprises comments by current or former graduate students in bioethics/medical humanities programs. In order to ensure a balanced set of commentary articles covering a wide range of graduate student experiences while also addressing a common set of signiŽcant questions about graduate bioethics and medical humanities programs, we asked all graduate student commentators to consider the following questions: 1. The Status of the Field Committee Chair, L. S. Rothenberg, sought the advice of the Director of the OfŽce for Protection of Research Subjects at the University of California at Los Angeles, on the question of whether a certiŽcate of exemption from the institutional review board (IRB), was needed for this study. He was advised that as a private organization, ASBH does not need an IRB certiŽcate of exemption to publish research developed by the organization and funded by a private foundation grant to the organization. Keywords