In Search of the Good ─ A Life in Bioethics

Daniel Callahan helped invent the field of bioethics more than forty years ago whenhe decided to use his training in philosophy to grapple with ethical problems in biology andmedicine. Disenchanted with academic philosophy because of its analytical bent and distance from theconcerns of real life, Callahan found the ethical issues raised by the rapid medical advances of the1960s--which included the birth control pill, heart transplants, and new capacities to keep verysick people alive--to be philosophical questions with immediate real-world relevance. In thismemoir, Callahan describes his part in the founding of bioethics and traces his thinking on criticalissues including embryonic stem cell research, market-driven health care, and medical rationing. Heidentifies the major challenges facing bioethics today and ruminates on its future. Callahan writesabout founding the Hastings Center--the first bioethics research institution--with the author andpsychiatrist Willard Gaylin in 1969, and recounts the challenges of running a think tank whilekeeping up a prolific flow of influential books and articles. Editor of the famous liberal Catholicmagazine Commonweal in the 1960s, Callahan describes his now-secular approach toissues of illness and mortality. He questions the idea of endless medical "progress" andinterventionist end-of-life care that seems to blur the boundary between living and dying. It is therole of bioethics, he argues, to be a loyal dissenter in the onward march of medical progress. Themost important challenge for bioethics now is to help rethink the very goals of medicine.