The range and complexity of issues is as broad as the medical profession itself. In order to bring the moral dimensions of health policy and medical care to the forefront of scholarship and practice, the university has created the Bioethics Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. Announced last month at a special ceremony on the East Baltimore campus, the new institute will draw together faculty from across the university to study the moral and ethical questions arising in the medical, biological, public health and social sciences. It will be led by Faden, who has gained national prominence as a medical ethicist for her work as chair of a presidential panel investigating Cold War-era radiation experiments on unsuspecting human subjects. Now however, with the tremendous advances of molecular biology and the simultaneous changes in health care delivery, ethical issues often transcend simple medical decisions.
Every new advance seems to come with a host of ethical issues.
For instance, the Human Genome Project will identify every human gene. Already we are seeing the language of genetic discrimination begin to emerge. Faden's designation as director of the Bioethics Institute included appointment as the first Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics. The newly endowed chair was named in honor of Philip F. Wagley, associate professor emeritus in the School of Medicine, who is widely remembered for having delivered the first lecture in medical ethics at the School of Medicine nearly 20 years ago. He subsequently co-directed the school's first course in medical ethics until his retirement in 1987.