Contact

Resume

Links  

Site MAP 

Search  

 Home

1. The focus of my course is much more upon medical ethics than bioethics.  The distinction is not always observed, but when it is, bioethics usually denotes "the study of ethical issues arising in the practice of the biological disciplines," including all the health care professions (e.g., medicine, nursing, veterinary medicine) and the biological sciences, such as environmental ethics and "various sociopolitical moral issues, including the adverse effects on people's health of unemployment, poverty, unjust discrimination, crime, war, and torture" (quoted language is from Raanan Gillon, "Bioethics Overview," in 1 Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (Academic Press, 1998, Ruth Chadwick, ed.).  The Web resources that follow are mostly concerned with medical ethics. 

2. Another way to view medical ethics is as a subset of medical humanities, including medicine and the arts (e.g., medicine and music, literature and medicine), medicine and history, health care economics, medical anthropology and sociology, and the like.  I have collected some of the literature-related Web materials on my Law, Literature & Medicine/Web Resources page, and I invite you to visit that page, as well.  If research on a bioethics topic leads you to health- or health-law-related topics, try my Health Care Law/Web Resources page.  If all you need is to find a bioethics statute or regulation (state or federal), go to my Legislation/Web Resources page. 

My goal has been to create a short and useful list of links that will, within a click or two of where you are right now, lead you to most of the important and resource-rich sites on the Web. 

I.  Starting Points  

A.  Generic Research Resources

1. Google and Yahoo!  -- Although a links page like the one you're reading right now can be useful, I usually start my Web searches with a visit to Google or Yahoo!  They are easy to search, and the results are often extraordinarily good.  See also search engines on my Search page and a longer list on my WWW Links page.
2. AltaVista has a nice collection of sites, too, at Society & Politics|Law|Healthcare & Law (AIDS, biotechnology, euthanasia, and patients' rights). 
3. "Librarians' Index to the Internet."  -- If Yahoo! doesn't yield the results you are looking for, try the Berkeley Public Library's "Librarians' Index to the Internet."  It has a wonderful collection of very carefully selected sites on every Health & Medicine topic, including a good "Best of Health & Medicine" page.
4. A good all-purpose search engine for legal materials (state and federal; judicial, legislative, and regulatory) is maintained by Georgia State University's School of Law.  Other law-search sites include FindLaw,  WashLaw's WEB links at Washburn University School of Law, and "Law Library on the Net."

B.  Bioethics Starting Points

1. Bioethics news: bioethics.net; MSNBC Breaking Bioethics Front Page
2. Google's bioethics page
3. National Institutes of Health - Bioethics Resources on the Web: excellent collection of links, organized in a straightforward and intuitive manner, simple to navigate; my favorite place to start Web research in this field
4. BioethicsWeb (from the Wellcome Trust)
5. Kennedy Institute of Ethics (Georgetown University) -- National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature -- Basic Resources in Bioethics.  See also the home page for the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal.
6. Applied Ethics Resources on the Web
7. American Journal of Bioethics' News Archive
8. New England Journal of Medicine's Medical Ethics Collection
9. Emory University Health Science Center's "MedWeb" has a great collection of bioethics-related links.
10. Similarly, see MedWebPlus' extensive listing.
11. The AMA has put its "Current Opinions of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs" on its website and has expanded its CEJA page, which now includes copies of most CEJA Reports; also click here for new Opinions and CEJA reports adopted since the publication of the 2002-2003 Code of Medical Ethics.
    1. The AMA's STEP program (Strategies for Teaching and Evaluating Professionalism) - a partnership with 10 North American medical schools - is described here.  Not much of substance here, yet, but stay tuned; it could get interesting.
12. The American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine web site includes an on-line version of their valuable Ethics Manual (4th ed. 1998).
13. As primers go, this is one of the best on-line - The Canadian Medical Association Journal's series, "Bioethics for Clinicians".
14. University of Toronto has its entire undergraduate medical school ethics curriculum on the WWW.
15. The UK's General Medical Council has a great "Ethical Guidance" page (including Good Medical Practice)
16. SCIRUS (excellent science-oriented search engine from Reed Elsevier) 
17. For recent news stories involving bioethical issues, try Bioethics.net's "Recent News" feature on their homepage.
18. University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics has a very evolved Web site, with materials for "bioethics beginners," a very nicely indexed collection of web sites and articles by Center faculty, and dedicated pages on cloning law and policy, ethics and genetics, and physician-assisted suicide - The American Journal of Bioethics seems to be just another name for the same site.
19. Albert Jonsen's website for the Department of Medical History and Ethics has some good stuff. Don't miss the excellent "Bioethics Topics" page, which has some useful discussions, including case studies.  See also University of Washington Medical School's "Ethics in Medicine" web site.
20. Biomedical Ethics: Newsletter of the European Network for Biomedical Ethics has all of its issues on-line in full-text.
21. Yahoo! has added a Biomedical Ethics page.
22. Medical College of Wisconsin has a good collection of materials (some primary, some links) at their "Bioethics Resources for Meeting JCAHO Requirements" page.  Their general bioethics resource page is good, too.
23. Medical College of Georgia has a two-year program: Phase I and Phase II - looks pretty good.
24. Stony Brook Univ. has a good first-year or second-year program, with case studies
25. Also check out the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics.  They have a particularly good collection of educational resources on their publications page.  See also the biweekly essays by Jeffrey Kahn, the director of the Center, on the CNN webpage. 
26. Health Hippo has an interesting collection of materials and links -- always worth a visit.

27. Though not particularly research-oriented, the AMA's "Virtual Mentor" page is an interactive, Web-based forum for analysis and discussion of clinical and professional issues that medical students encounter during their educational training. The Virtual Mentor content areas are designed to inform, awaken, and energize students to engage in a learning dialogue with experts in medicine, law, and bioethics."  See also:

    a.  UT-Southwestern's Interactive Ethics page; 
    b.  Maurice Bernstein's "Bioethics Discussion Pages" -- an eclectic assortment of essays and interactive discussions on a wide variety of topics; often thought-provoking, it's not so much a research resource ('though there is some of that) as it is a well-organized town hall meeting.  

28. A Shared Statement of Ethical Principles for Those Who Shape and Give Health Care: A Working Draft from the Tavistock Group, Annals of Internal Medicine, 19 January 1999. 130:143-147
29. Roger Rigterink's listing of on-line bioethics readings
30. Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a number of entries on relevant topics.  See also noesis: Philosophical Research On-line & Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
31. Bioethics increasingly overlaps -- in scope of application if not more -- with business ethics.  As to the latter, here's a good place to start. 
32. Ethics Resource Center

II.  Research Sources By Topic

A.  Abortion

1. Abortion Access: All Sides of the Issue
2. Center for Reproductive Law and Policy -- excellent collection of federal , state, and international materials
3. Alan Guttmacher Institute, Monthly update of State Policies in Brief | Also: custom table-maker & articles on-line
4. See also the Kaiser Family Foundation's Daily Reproductive Health Report.
5. Yahoo! has a good list, too
6. A good collection of fact sheets and Web sites is maintained by NARAL Pro-Choice California.
7. International Planned Parenthood Federation: excellent collection of resources.
8. U.S. FDA's mifepristone (RU-486) information page
9. Texas Supreme Court's Parental Notification Rules and Forms

B. Animal Ethics

1. American Veterinary Medicine Association's (AVMA's) Code of Ethics - 2000 Report of the AMVA Panel on Euthanasia (PDF)
2. American Psychological Association's Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in the Care and Use of Animals
3. National Academies' list of resources regarding animal welfare and ethics
4. Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy's Legislative Resources for Animal Law
5. Ethics of Using Animals in Research (Stephanie J. Bird, Ph.D.): includes good links
6. The Moral Status of Animals (part of Lawrence Hinman's ethics updates)
7. Google Directory: Animal Welfare/Animal Rights
8. Peter Singer Links page - Peter Singer in the N.Y. Review of Books
9. Animal Legal and Historical Center - Michigan State Univ./DCL School of Law

B.  Death and Dying

1. Generic WWW coverage of the topic: About.com has a good collection; so does Yahoo!.  Yahoo! also has good news coverage of assisted suicide and other "right-to-die" developments.
2. ABA Commission on Law and Aging -- ABA Advance Directives Toolkit
3. Pain management and the law - from St. Louis University & ASLME
4. Terri Schiavo's case: timeline and key documents (from Steven Haidar & Kathy Cerminara)
5. Brain death & PVS
   1. American Academy of Neurology practice guidelines: Brain death (PDF)
   2. NEJM brain death review article (requires registration)
   3. Braindeath.org
   4. American Academy of Neurology practice guidelines: Persistent vegetative state (PDF)
   5. Many death-and-dying cases involve patients diagnosed to be in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS).  For some on-line resources, see: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: Coma (and PVS) Information Page; David Chalmers' pages are a good place to start exploring the intersection of philosophy, physics, and neuroscience, especially the papers on consciousness.  Ethical aspects of PVS are useful summarized in the Lancet, 2001;322:352-354
6. European Court of Human Rights: Pretty v. The United Kingdom (April 29, 2002)
7. For information on advance directives (and related end-of-life issues), including state-specific forms, go to:
   1. National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization's advance directives page
   2. Caring Connections (National Hospice and Palliative Care Org.’s consumer outreach initiative): http://www.caringinfo.org. 
   3. Institute of Medicine, Committee on Care at the End of Life, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life (1997) - invaluable resource
8. NIH
   1. State-of-the-Science Conference on Improving End-of-Life Care (Feb. 2005)
   2. "Symptoms in Terminal Illness: A Research Workshop" (22-23 September 1997) produced some very useful reports, available in full-text.
9. Consensus statement of 11 medical associations re: "Principles for Care of Patients at the End of Life"
10. Compassion & Choices (Compassion in Dying Federation) (End-of-Life Choices)
11. University of San Diego's Euthanasia and End-of-Life Decisions website - video-streaming lectures by Dan Callahan, Tom Beauchamp, Larry Schneiderman, Sue Rubin, Lawrence Hinman, Rita Marker; massive collection of web links
12. Americans for Better Care of the Dying: see esp. News and Shaping Public Policy
13. AMA's advance directives page
14. Project on Death in America (Open Society Institute - a Soros Foundations Network)
15. University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics
16. University of Toronto's Joint Centre for Bioethics
17. NPR's series, "The End of Life," is a wealth of materials.  Not to be missed are the hundreds of listeners' stories about death and dying.  A unique resource.
18. Bill Moyers' PBS special, "On Our Own Terms"; includes resource page
19. Michael Lutzky's "A Matter of Life and Death": the story of John Graham's death from cancer and the debate over the "Rights of the Terminally Ill Act" in Australia's Northern Territory, in video and audio/text formats
20. "Before I Die" -- program materials and resources for the PBS program that originally aired on April 22, 1997.
21. International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (formerly the International Anti-Euthanasia Home Page)
22. New York State Task Force on Life and the Law -- full-text version of "When Death Is Sought: Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in the Medical Context" (1994) and the 1997 Supplement.
23. Another New York resource: Family Decisions Coalition, a group that works to reform the state's restrictive stance on substituted- judgment decision making; the site includes background discussions and full opinions from the Eichner/Storar and O'Connor cases
24. International Network For the Definition of Death -- good links, some on-line documents.
25. Hospice Foundation of America
26. Physician-Assisted Suicide -- U.S. Supreme Court materials  (opinions in Washington v. Gluckberg and Vacco v. Quill; lower-court and state materials from Washington, Oregon, and the Ninth and Second Circuits; briefs of the parties and many amici).  See also University of Pennsylvania's collection of amicus briefs (click on "assisted suicide" in the left-side menu). Also, Yahoo! does a pretty good job of updating its "Assisted Suicide & Euthanasia" section.
27. Physician-Assisted Suicide -- the Oregon experience: Oregon's Department of Human Resources' Oregon Health Division (OHD) has a Physician-Assisted Suicide page, including links to their annual reports. The main page also has links to the compliance forms, statute, and OHD regulations.
28. Pain Relief Promotion Act of 2000: H.R. 2260/S. 1272 (106th Cong.); Google search results
29. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Voluntary Euthanasia
30. National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
31. Brown Univ. Atlas of Dying
32. Religion & Ethics: Euthanasia (BBC)
33. Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Orders

    1. VA's DNR policy

    2. Excellent educational site for DNRs (University of Washington)

    3. Good discussion of CPR Policy at Mercer

    4. Cleveland Clinic's DNR protocol

    5. Texas Out-of-Hospital DNR Guidelines

    6. NY Department of Health: Deciding about CPR: Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) Orders -- A Guide for Patients and Families

    7. Merck Manual, Second Home Edition: DNR Orders

    8. American Family Physician: practical guidelines for DNR orders

    9. Answers.com/Wikipedia

    10. Pediatrics: DNR Orders for Pediatric Patients Who Require Anesthesia and Surgery

34. Check your own "death clock" (countdown timer) here. 
35. Obituary resources: Daily Telegraph | N.Y. Times | Washington Post | ObitPage.com
36. Guide to Cemetery Iconography

C. Ethics Codes
(see also: my list of ethics resources by specialty)

1. IIT's Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions: Index of Codes
2. University of Adelaide Library: Codes of Professional Ethics and Statements of Human Rights
3. UT-Southwestern's Code of Ethics Resources

D.  Federal Developments

1. President's Council on Bioethics (2001- ) | Working papers etc.
   • Executive Order 13237 (Nov. 28, 2001) (Fed. Reg. (PDF))
   • Announcement of members (Jan. 16, 2002)
   • Reports and White Papers on:
     • human cloning (July 2002)
     • biotech and the pursuit of happiness (October 2003)
     • Being Human (humanities readings from the Council's bioethics bookshelf) (December 2003)
     • monitoring stem cell research (January 2004)
     • alternative sources of pluripotent stem cells (May 2005)
2. National Bioethics Advisory Commission (1995-2001)
   • Executive Order 12975 ((Oct. 3, 1995) (Fed. Reg. (PDF))
     • Amendment/reauthorization, EO 13137, (Sep. 15, 1999) (Fed. Reg. (PDF))
   • Charter
   • Reports on:
     • human cloning (June 1997);
     • research involving persons with mental disorders that may affect decision making capacity (December 1998);
     • the use of human biological materials in research (August 1999);
     • stem cell research (September 1999)
     • clinical trials in developing countries (April 2001)
     • research involving human participants (August 2001)
3. The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments' final report, interim report, and archival materials are available through the National Security Archives web site.
   • Dep't of Energy/Office of Human Radiation Experiments - good Web site 
4. HHS' Web site on organ transplantation 

E.  Genetics

1. DNA Learning Center (from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
2. A glossary and primer in human genetics (from the DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Project Information office)
3. From NIH's National Human Genome Research Initiative, a multimedia  "Glossary of Genetic Terms" -- over 200 essential terms explained
4. Nature's Genome Information Centre - includes great collection of news, ethics articles, useful links
5. The Wellcome Trust: genomics resource page
6. Centre for Law & Genetics (Univ. of Tasmania)
7. University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics' Web page on cloning and genetics.
8. BioNews (genetics and assisted reproduction)
9. Excellent page of links on genetic research at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health website
10. National Bioethics Advisory Commission -- list of reports (including human cloning, stem cell research, and the use of human biological materials)
11. Stem cells
    • President Bush's August 2001 policy statement (HTML) (PDF)
      • NIH's 2000 Guidelines (pdf) (Aug. 25, 2000); (corrections (pdf)) (Nov. 21, 2001)
      • NIH's Nov. 2001 withdrawal of part of 2000 Guidelines (Nov. 11, 2001)
    • OHRP's "Guidance for Investigators and Institutional Review Boards Regarding Research Involving Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Germ Cells, and Cell-Derived Test Articles" (PDF)
    • NIH's stem cell information page
    • AAAS Stem Cell Research Policy Brief
    • Someone else's stem cell information page
    • Yahoo!'s stem cell information page
    • Google's stem cell page (legal issues)
    • Committee on the Biological and Biomedical Applications of Stem Cell Research, Board on Life Sciences, National Research Council, Board on Neuroscience and Behavioral Health, Institute of Medicine: Stem Cells and the Future of Regenerative Medicine (Sept. 11, 2001) (pdf) 
    • British Government
      • "Chief Medical Officer's Expert Group Report 'Stem Cell Research: Medical Progress with Responsibility' (Aug. 16, 2000)"
        • Government's Response (Department of Health) (Aug 2000)
      • British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990
12. State Laws re: Testing & Discrimination
• National Conference of State Legislatures Genetic Technologies Project
• State Genetics Laws and Genetics Legislative Activity
13. Cloning
    • President's Council on Bioethics' report on human cloning (July 2002)
    • Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, Policy and Global Affairs Division, Board on Life Sciences, Division on Earth and Life Studies, National Research Council report: "Scientific and Medical Aspects of Human Reproductive Cloning" (Jan. 18, 2002) (PDF) (report home page)
    • National Conference of State Legislatures' cloning page
    • Yahoo's cloning page
    • Google's cloning page (ethics page)
    • The New York Times has a good collection of articles on cloning. 
    • New Scientist's cloning page -- continuously updated, a good source of news and views on the subject
    • Conceiving a Clone -- information, issues, regulations, public debate: a very complete site. Also has an "unenhanced" version for 1.x and 2.x browsers.
    • Catholic Bishops' "Cloning and Embryo Research" page  
    • "Cloning People and Jewish Law - A Preliminary Analysis," from Jewish Law webpage
    • TAMU's Genetics Savings& Clone website - Pet Division - bioethics page - Missyplicity Project
14. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): biotech
15. UCLA's Web page on Human Germline Engineering.
16. UT-Southwestern's standard consent template, checklist, and regulations for genetic research 
17. GeneTests (from Nat'l Library of Medicine (NIH) and Maternal & Child Health Bureau (HRSA)
18. Complaint in wrongful death action on behalf of Jesse Gelsinger
19. You never know for how long an individual will maintain a personal page of links, but at least for the time being, Bryn Williams-Jones, a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia, has an impressive  number of bioethics-related links, mostly related to genetics and biotechnology, including separate collections on genetics and the law and "genethics."
20. NIH/Office of Biotechnology Activities/Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee
21. U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (press releases) | Notice of Utility Examination Guidelines for gene patents (Jan. 5, 2001, Fed. Reg.)
22. The Human Genome Project has a good page on ELSI (Ethical, Legal and Social Issues).  See also the National Human Genome Research Institute's ELSI page and ELSI's bioethics bibliography.
23. NIH's National Center for Biotechnology has a nice page on Human Genome Sequencing.
24. See also the Talking Glossary of Genetic Terms from NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute
25. Howard Hughes Medical Institute's "Genetic Trail" site: a good introduction to the issues
26. Image Archive on the American Genetics Movement - from the DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 
27. Associations, societies, etc.: The American Society of Human Genetics | Genetics Society of America | American College of Medical Genetics | American Board of Medical Genetics | American Board of Genetic Counseling | Association of Professors of Human or Medical Genetics | International Federation of Human Genetics Societies | American Society for Reproductive Medicine
28. Against Their Will: newspaper series on North Carolina's 41-year experience with eugenic sterilization

F.  Human Experimentation
Additional materials here: http://faculty.smu.edu/tmayo/twmlinkshealth.htm#humres