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Bioethicists advise on ethical issues in medicine and medical research, often with diverse backgrounds in science, law, theology, or philosophy. They may work independently or consult for hospitals, businesses, and governments, and address issues such as when life begins, quality of life, and human subject research. Ethical interpretations vary, and bioethicists base their advice on a study of ethical systems.
A bioethicist is a person who works in the field of bioethics. Training for this type of career can be diverse and usually involves training with some medical/scientific background combined with further studies in ethics. In addition to these studies, the bioethicist typically has graduate work in law, theology, or philosophy. With such an education, there are many places where bioethicists can function.
Essentially, these professionals are trained to help advise others or suggest courses of action in medicine and medical research that are in line with available ethical choices. How ethics is determined can be interpreted differently depending on the moral system from which medical ethics arises. For example, a Catholic hospital, when faced with a moral dilemma, might depend on the advice of a Catholic bioethicist. This person would consider the ethics problem that evolved from Catholic teaching, ultimately suggesting a course of action or possible courses that the hospital could take.
A bioethicist can do much more than advise hospitals or the occasional patient in a hospital facing an extreme ethical dilemma. Many of these medical ethics specialists work independently of any organization and may be asked to consult on specific issues. Companies or businesses that could request queries include those that create research involving human subjects, hospitals, medical clinics, laboratories, and others. Some bioethicists consult or participate in think tanks that help shape government policy. At this level, understanding the diversity of ethical interpretation is extremely important, especially when advising countries with extremely large and varied populations.
Another place the bioethicist can work is in university settings. More and more schools are offering bioethics programs instead of having people put the career together through multidisciplinary studies. Creating programs in which bioethics becomes a focus, and often a doctorate means having professors to teach these classes. While in philosophy, medicine, or other departments, there may be some people with a focus on bioethics, having a big, big department in that area means requiring a larger pool of experts to learn that discipline.
Some may still be confused about the tasks a bioethicist could perform. As mentioned, they tend to advise, teach, help define policy, create research protocols, and answer or suggest solutions to ethical dilemmas. The latter often creates confusion, as what is an ethical dilemma in medicine? There are actually many, and people may be very familiar with them. Some issues in which bioethics could be of interest include the following:
1) When does life begin?
2) To what extent does the proposed treatment affect quality of life?
3) Does a treatment/experiment respect life and present little danger to humans?
4) When should the treatment be stopped?
5) What degree of research is allowed on humans and what level of development constitutes a human (stem cell research)?
6) Does abusive treatment of human subjects mean that research results should be discarded?
There can be many different answers to these questions, depending on moral, theological, and even political leanings. Bioethicists don’t always agree on these huge questions, but they base their arguments on a study of ethical systems. It helps them create rationalizations for the things they advise, but it doesn’t necessarily come up with single answers that everyone in medicine/ethics can agree on.
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