Bioethics in American Society

本项目的总体目标是对美国社会中生命伦理学的起源、发展、作用和意义进行历史的编年史和社会学的分析。这项研究将涉及以下主题，以及它们之间的相互联系：生物伦理学在20世纪60年代后期作为一个领域的起源;主要的知识和专业学科，已经和没有，主要参与，以及它们所代表的价值复合体;生物伦理学的精神，包括道德哲学，神学和宗教已经和没有发挥的作用;生物伦理学关注和研究的主要专题焦点，包括生物伦理学与美国社会其他伦理关注焦点之间存在或不存在明确的相互联系以及更潜在的社会和价值联系的程度和方式;生物伦理学是如何“超越医学”的，而且，无论如何，它潜在地涉及到超越伦理的主题;该领域的社会组织、制度化和逐步扩展;它越来越多地渗透到公共领域的方式和原因;以及该领域的理论和方法。这项研究将采用历史和社会学研究方法相结合的方法：（1）对“三代”生物伦理学家的关键人物和其他参与早期“生物伦理学走向华盛顿”政策舞台的人进行半结构化的个人和小组深入访谈;（2）对生物伦理学文献进行内容分析;（3）从1960年代到1990年代，对该领域逐步制度化的社会组织分析;（4）对三代人进入生物伦理学的人之间的相互关系进行社会计量学或社会圈子分析。在过去的30年里，生命伦理学一直是詹姆斯M。Gufstason称之为“伦理：美国的增长产业”。尽管生物伦理学在美国社会中已经取得了突出的成就，但是，研究该领域发展的工作却很少。该项目旨在解决这一真空：这将是第一次深入研究生物伦理学，也将阐明与美国思想，价值观和信仰有关的更广泛的主题。除了书面产品（一本书和论文）外，这项研究还将产生一批重要的档案材料，主要包括与生物伦理学关键人物访谈的录音带和文字记录，这些材料将存放在肯尼迪伦理学研究所。

The overall objective of this project is to chronicle historically and analyze sociologically the genesis, development, roles, and significance of bioethics in American society. The study will address the following topics, and the interconnections between them: the genesis of bioethics as a field in the late 1960s; the chief intellectual and professional disciplines that have, and have not, been centrally involved, and the value complexes they represent; the ethos of bioethics, including the roles that moral philosophy, theology, and religion have and have not played; the major thematic foci of bioethical interest and inquiry, including the extent to which and ways in which there are or are not explicit interconnections as well as more latent social and value linkages between bioethics and other foci of ethical concerns in American society; the ways in which bioethics is `more-than-medical` and, however latently, has involved more-than-ethical themes; the social organization, institutionalization, and progressive expansion of the field; the ways that and reasons for which it has increasingly pervaded public domains; and the field's theories and methodologies. The study will use a combination of historical and sociological research methods: (1)semi-structured in-depth individual and small group interviews with key persons from `three generations` of bioethicists, and others involved in the early `bioethics goes to Washington` policy arenas; (2) content analyses of the bioethics literature; (3) a social organizational analysis of the field's progressive institutionalization from the 1960s through the 1990s; and (4) a sociometric or social circles analysis of the interconnections between those who entered bioethics across three generations. During the past 3 decades, bioethics has been a dominant component of what James M. Gufstason has called `ethics: an American growth industry.` Despite the prominence that bioethics has achieved in American society, however, there has been a paucity of work that has examined the field's development. The project has been designed to address this vacuum: it will be the first in-depth study of bioethics, and one which also will illuminate broader themes dealing with American ideas, values, and beliefs. In addition to written products (a book and papers), the study will generate an important body of archival materials, consisting primarily of tapes and transcripts of interviews with key persons in bioethics, which will be deposited at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.