Shaping tomorrow’s thinking

Regulating UK Bioethics

Jonathan Montgomery20 July 2012

Shaping tomorrow’s thinking

History• Health Professionalism

– BMA, Royal Colleges– Kennedy challenge in Reith Lectures

• Bureaucratic bioethics– Warnock – HFEA– Nuffield Council on Bioethics– Human Genetics Commission

• Post-bureaucratic bioethics– The bonfire of the Quangos

Shaping tomorrow’s thinking

Issues?

• Explanations offered– Cost– Legitimacy

• Evidence, rigour & politics– Presumed consent or ‘opt-out’ to organ

donation in England & Wales– ‘Condemnation’ - a retreat from

evidence-based decision-making?

Shaping tomorrow’s thinking

Phoenix possibilities

• Personalisation– Bioethics as a private matter

• Privatisation– Demos, Pratchett & Assisted Dying– Big Society?

• Democratisation– Parliamentary committee

Shaping tomorrow’s thinking

Creating the future

• Emerging Science and Bioethics Advisory Committee (ESBAC)

• NCoB– Rigour– Stakeholders– Public debate

• Faith Communities…