Tightening of Ethical Standards in Bioengineering Brings Teaching the Fore: In a Realm Noted for Puzzlement, a Rare Consensus Is Achieved

While the practice of ethical pondering has a formal academic history more than several thousand years old, and its pedigree within the human heart is undoubtedly much older, the somewhat specialized field of bioethics goes back approximately only 50 years in the United States. And while practitioners in the field-known as much for their painstaking pondering as for their acrimonious tendency to disagree-rarely achieve quick consensus on the pressing issues of the day, it would appear that in the United States we have reached some consensus on the best way of teaching biomedical ethics to undergraduate students.