Artificial Kidneys and the Emergence of Bioethics: The History of 'Outsiders' in the Allocation of Haemodialysis

作者：Adams David^*

来源：Social History of Medicine, 2011, 24(2): 461-477.

DOI：10.1093/shm/hkq053

• bioethics
• Rothman
• haemodialysis
• ethics committees
• dialysis

This paper challenges the received view of the emergence of biomedical ethics as a distinct field. That account, championed by such scholars as David Rothman and Albert Jonsen, says that bioethics began when clinicians sought help from lay 'outsiders' because the traditional sources of medical ethics provided no guidance in deciding, for example, whom among many candidates should receive scarce haemodialysis treatments. Laypersons were expected to provide a moral skill clinicians lacked. But an examination of largely overlooked evidence from the period tells a different story. I argue that the received account overstates what those physicians who opened the doors to the outsiders expected laypersons to contribute. The historical materials at least partly contest the claim that the traditional precepts of medical ethics had ceased to operate upon the collective conscience of those physicians who in the 1960s first confronted the moral issues created by new and life-saving medical technologies.

• 出版日期2011-8
• 单位香港理工大学