Main | Consulting Surveys | Survey Responses | Bibliography | Codes of Ethics
As discussions have increased in recent years about ethics consultation for industry, so has the literature. At the same time, the issues that are the focus of today’s discussions are not entirely new, having arisen in fields outside bioethics and in contexts outside of industry (e.g., hospitals). Although this bibliography focuses primarily on ethics consultation for the biotechnology industry and the relevant bioethical and professional issues it raises, it also includes items from other fields engaged in consulting for organizations of all types. There is much that can be learned by how other professionals and their professions have identified, assessed, and responded to the ethical concerns associated with their consulting practices.
The bibliography begins with a list of books and reports that include broad discussions related to bioethics as a field, ethicists as consultants for industry and other organizations, including matters related to the values that come into play when consulting and the ethical issues raised for the consultant and others. Following this list is a series of published articles and book chapters that are organized into three sections. Consulting, Bioethics and Health Care includes literature on ethics consultation related to bioethical issues in industry and health care institutions. The literature ranges from theoretical issues to goals and methods, from education to credentials, from responsibility to accountability, and from standards to very practical matters dealing with delivering one’s advice. The consulting body is sometimes an individual and sometimes a committee. In some cases, the consulting focuses on clinical care, while in other instances, it applies to broader bioethical issues confronting society. A second section, Consulting, Non-Bioethics Fields, covers a similar range of issues as the preceding section, but does so in fields outside bioethics, with an emphasis on consulting for corporations. The third section, Law and Consulting, includes a few items on the law as it may affect ethics consultants.
A number of people have contributed to the compilation and production of this bibliography. They include Christine Bellordre, Azurii K. Collier, Brent Garland, Rachel Gartner, James Howard, Berry Kennedy, and Melissa Pollak. While we make no claim that the bibliography captures all the relevant literature, we do hope that by bringing much of it together into this single document, it can help ground ongoing discussions of ethics consulting for biotechnology industry in previous conceptual, empirical, and experiential work on the topic.