TCG: Reviving Our Virtue (pt. I)

Reviving Our Virtue (pt. I)

A discussion of Henry K. Beecher’s “Ethics and Clinical Practice”

To safeguard human subjects in medical research, in 1966 Harvard anesthesiologist Henry K. Beecher called for “the presence of an intelligent, informed, conscientious, compassionate, responsible investigator” — in other words, more virtuous clinicians and scientists, rather than external regulation. How well has that worked? And can we heed Beecher’s plea today, as less-than-virtuous behavior dominates politics, discourse, and beyond? This week, Leigh begins a discussion of virtue ethics by looking back to Beecher’s groundbreaking (and yet not-so-groundbreaking) article “Ethics and Clinical Practice.”

(Henry Knowles Beecher, 1962. Images © Massachusetts General Hospital Archives and Special Collections and The New England Journal of Medicine.)

To skip the intro, fast forward to the 2:24 mark.