Morality Bureaucrats.(Brief Article)

Sally Satel and Christine Stolba, "Who Needs Medical Ethics?" in Commentary (February 2001), 165 East 56th Street, New York, New York 10022.

The 1990s saw the rise of the "medical ethicist or bioethicist who advises large hospitals, health maintenance organizations, universities, pharmaceutical companies, and politicians about the right and wrong way to practice medicine. The largest medical ethics organization, the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, has over 1,600 members. Satel, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Stolba argue that the advice medical ethicists give is at best unnecessary and at worst dubious.

Unlike tile years of training required of an M.D., "there are few meaningful standards for bedside ethicists." Some are lawyers or Ph. Ds who enter bioethics after years of training. Others simply take a ten-day training session at institutions such as Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics.

Nor is it clear what knowledge bioethicists possess that doctors don't have. University of Chicago researchers asked 100 bioethicists seven questions about a patient who appeared incapable of experiencing pain, had no ...