The Presidential Bioethics Commission: Pedagogical Materials and Bioethics Education

摘要

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bio-ethical Issues was created by President Obama in 2009 to identify and promote policies and practices that ensure scientific research, health care delivery, and technological innovation are conducted in socially and ethically responsible manners.1 The bioethics commission is an independent and thoughtful group of experts who advises the President and, in so doing, strives to educate the nation on bioethical issues. As part of the effort to promote policies and practices ensuring ethical conduct in research, innovation, and health care delivery, the bioethics commission staff, in consultation with commission members, has used the bioethics commission reports to develop pedagogical materials for traditional and nontraditional educational settings. The goal is to use contemporary issues addressed by the bioethics commission to support teaching of bioethics ideas, principles, and theories across the major areas of study and practice.An overarching theme throughout the bioethics commission's reports has been the need for improvement in bioethics education for scientific and medical professionals. The commission recognizes that in this era of mul-tidisciplinary research, where professionals from various social, biomedical, statistical, engineering, and natural sciences constitute research teams to investigate solutions to difficult health problems from diverse perspectives, there is a need to calibrate the ethical foundations established during training.