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Comment
. 2021 Jul;51(4):36-37.
doi: 10.1002/hast.1272.

Why Clinical Ethicists Are Not Activists

Carl Elliott
Comment

Why Clinical Ethicists Are Not Activists

Carl Elliott. Hastings Cent Rep. 2021 Jul.

Abstract

Activism is rare among clinical ethicists because the position of ethics consultant is constructed in a way that makes activism very difficult. Clinical ethicists have little formal power and few job protections; they work in organizations in which dissent is discouraged if not punished; and as institutional insiders, they often become blind to the injustices that outsiders protest against.

Keywords: activism; clinical ethics; whistleblowing.

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References

    1. C. Meyers, “Activism and the Clinical Ethicist,” Hastings Center Report 51, no. 4 (2020): 22-31.
    1. C. Peters and T. Branch, Blowing the Whistle (New York: Praeger, 1972), 20.
    1. B. Freedman, “Where Are the Heroes of Bioethics?,” Journal of Clinical Ethics 7, no. 4 (1996): 297-99.
    1. C. F. Alford, Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 32.
    1. S. McDonald and K. Ahern, “The Professional Consequences of Whistleblowing by Nurses,” Journal of Professional Nursing 16, no. 6 (2000): 313-21.

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