Bioethics

Bioethics is the study of ethical issues in the practice of medicine and biomedical research. The field of bioethics has flourished for 30 years, and bioethicists have made significant progress on ethical issues in clinical medicine—that is, on “bedside” issues in the delivery of health care. More recently, significant attention has been paid to the just distribution of scarce health care resources. At the forefront of contemporary bioethics are issues tied specifically to forprofit health care such as the ethical development and marketing of pharmaceuticals.

The field of bioethics is one of the closest allied areas of research to business ethics. Bioethics and business ethicists deal with many similar issues, such as the appropriate use of ethical theory in dealing with practical ethical questions, obligations to conflicting stakeholders, and the scope and limits of professional codes of conduct. However, health care providers have generally welcomed the advances made by bioethicists regarding the ethical delivery of health care, and most hospitals now have an ethics committee, the task of which is to adjudicate difficult ethical issues that arise in the practice of medicine. In addition, ethical training is now routinely incorporated into medical school and nursing school curriculums. In contrast, businesspeople have not welcomed advances made by business ethicists in the same way, and business ethics education is not typically a required element of business school curriculums. Part of the explanation for this difference in attitudes lies in the fact that physicians and nurses regard themselves as having ethical duties to patients, whereas managers and directors typically regard themselves as having fiduciary duties to the owners of the business. It is also the case that in the United States, physicians and nurses have self-governing licensing boards that enforce ethical standards, whereas business managers and directors do not have equivalent layers of selfgovernance and ethics enforcement.