The Cambridge Consortium for Bioethics Education took place at the Cambridge University Press offices in New York this April. Hosted and sponsored by the Press, with cosponsors, CQ and the Program in Medicine & Human Values at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, the Consortium brought together representative leaders in bioethics to discuss some of the unsolved issues in the field: goals, curriculum, methods, and assessment. For three days participants shared their own programs, research, and current projects as well as ideas on where bioethics education needs to go in the future. Beginning with this special section, and in CQ’s Bioethics Education section in subsequent volumes, we will be bringing you what is happening as bioethicists everywhere take a more focused approach to the field.

Baby Theresa, in her short 9-day life, cast a national spotlight on the question “Should anencephalic infants be used for organ procurement?” In denying her parents′ wishes to donate the baby's healthy organs to other children in need of kidneys, liver, heart, and lungs, Circuit Court Judge Estella Moriarty said, “I cannot authorized someone to take your baby's life, however short, however unsatisfactory, to save another child.”In citing a1988 Florida statute that does not allow a person to be declared dead while any part of the brain is functioning, Judge Moriarty ruled that doctors could only remove organs not vital to Theresa Ann's life. As the baby slowly died, so too did her vital organs.

According to Frankena, “the moral point of view is what Alison Wilde and Heather Badcock did not have.” Most of us, however, are not such extreme examples. We are capable of the moral point of view, but we fail to take the necessary time or make the required efforts. We resist pulling ourselves from other distractions to focus on the plight of others and what we might do to ameliorate their suffering. Perhaps compassion is rooted in understanding what it is that connects us with others rather than what separates us, and rests on developing sufficient awareness, to internalize what our actions, or lack of them, mean in the lives of others.

In many countries the debate over the role that physicians may (or should) play in ending life has been limited to the judiciary and other law making institutions, professional medical organizations; and academics. Because of their multidisciplinary and diverse membership, ethics committees may be a particularly appropriate venue through which these discussions can be expanded to include a much larger community. In addition, ethics committees generally act in only advisory capacities because they do not actually make decisions, so they may provide a forum for open discussions in ways that the court and the medical boards (which make licensing determinations) cannot.

Our attitudes toward aging change in that “old” depends on where you are. When I was 16, and my sister Nancy was 29, I suddenly realized, to my horror, that one of us was about to be 30. I went around saying to everyone, “Poor Nancy, she's almost 40,” because to me at that time, 30 and 40 were about the same. Later, when Nancy was 40, she said she didn't mind because, according to me, she had been 40 for a decade.