Finding bioethics literature and commentary
Bioethics has bibliographic collections, institutional ethics resources, research institutes and blogs of its own, which carry publication types and commentary that a general medical index does not.
Bioethics libraries and bibliographic databases
The Bioethics Research Library at Georgetown University began with only a few shelves' worth of books from the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and by 2012 it housed more than 300,000 books, journal articles, audiovisuals and archival materials that cover a diversity of opinions on bioethical issues around the world. The Library's databases on bioethics literature, organisations and syllabi are accessible on its website and contain many links to full-text materials. Other sources on the site include the digital archives of the Presidential Bioethics Commissions, the Office for Human Research Protections, and the Genetics and Ethics Digital Collections.
The Library's website features two bibliographic databases of documents on bioethical issues from around the world, ETHXWeb and GenETHX, developed by the Library and Information Services group of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. Unlike PubMed, they contain many different publication types, such as book reviews, press releases, unpublished documents, position statements and news items, as well as bioethics literature from non-medical journals and books. In 2012 ETHXWeb had 286,000 records, GenETHX was a subset of it with 42,000 records, and both were updated twice each month. One reviewer recommends downloading the Bioethics Searcher's Guide to Online Information Resources, found under the site's Publications tab, and judges the site, which holds much more besides, a definite "must bookmark".
Health care ethics programmes
Founded in 1991, the National Center for Ethics in Health Care is the US Veterans Healthcare Administration's primary office for addressing ethical issues that arise in patient care, health care management and research, and provides support on issues in clinical, organisational and research ethics. Its mission is to clarify and promote ethical health care practices throughout the Veterans Healthcare Administration and nationwide. The centre's main initiatives resulted in IntegratedEthics, a programme conceived in 1999 that represents a radical departure from traditional approaches to ethics in health care. IntegratedEthics encompasses the full range of health care ethics issues by establishing and integrating a set of clear standards, roles, competencies, methods and performance metrics. It is a multilevel, multifaceted, organisation-wide programme supported by a national policy, sophisticated training programmes, validated evaluation tools and a robust electronic data and communications network. It is based on principles of continuous quality improvement and on strategies for organisational change that have proven effective in other fields. Its Ethics Consultation function provides much-needed assistance to patients, families and staff, its Preventive Ethics function introduces a novel quality improvement system that empowers staff to take on recurrent ethics problems at the systems level, and its Ethical Leadership function helps leaders create a culture that inspires employees to "do the right thing". IntegratedEthics is more than a training programme, a quality improvement intervention or the sum of new policies, standards, tools and structures, and the centre's website calls it a "transformational initiative that redefines ethics as it is both practiced and led in the health care arena".
Bioethics research institutes
The Hastings Center is one of the organisations that promote bioethics research: an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit bioethics research institute founded in 1969, whose mission is "to address fundamental ethical issues in the areas of health, medicine, and the environment as they affect individuals, communities, and societies". Its website offers resources on a selection of topic areas, many of which have been discussed on medical writers' discussion lists, such as clinical trials and human subject research and conflicts of interest in research. In 2011 the centre published The Hastings Center Report, a bimonthly journal promoting ethics in health, medicine and the environment, and IRB: Ethics & Human Research, a peer-reviewed, print-only journal, with some past issues available online, that explores issues in research with human subjects, including findings and analyses of empirical studies. The centre's website then also hosted two forums: The Bioethics Forum, a commentary between invited guests and visitors on timely issues in bioethics, and The Health Care Cost Monitor, which provides commentary and opinions on cost control as part of the implementation of health care reform.
Ethics blogs
Several blogs focus on scientific ethics. Adventures in Ethics and Science is written by Janet D Stemwedel, an associate professor of philosophy who teaches the philosophy and ethical conduct of science and holds a PhD in physical chemistry, which in one reviewer's view makes her appear well qualified, and covers the responsible conduct of scientific research, communication between scientists and non-scientists about the issues that matter to both, and teaching science and ethics. Blog.bioethics.net, from the editors of the American Journal of Bioethics, carries postings from bioethicists including Glenn McGee, David Magnus, Paul Root Wolpe, Arthur Caplan and the journal's editors, and from Ricki Lewis, who writes and lectures about genetics. Its recent topics in 2012 included whether the courts can require a 32-year-old woman with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder to have an abortion or refrain from sex, the use of Justin Bieber to drive organ donation sign-ups in Canada, and the denial of a kidney transplant for a severely disabled 3-year-old. The Research Ethics Blog is written by Nancy Walton, an associate professor of nursing who teaches ethics and chairs her university's research ethics board, and its recent posts in 2012 covered a crackdown on research misconduct in China, the research fraud of the Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel, and the importance of disclosing conflicts of interest when publishing research.
The Journal of Medical Ethics blog, written by the journal's editors, aims to offer their musings on all things ethical, quick reviews of important new books and some old ones, reports from conferences, and news about the journal. One of its recent posts in 2012 dealt with legislation introduced in the US Senate to prohibit the sale of food or other products for human consumption that contain aborted human fetuses or used them in the research or development of an ingredient. In 2012 a search on "ethics blogs" at the Masters Degree website returned a list of 50 ethics blogs recommended for science students.