The History of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia
The School of Medicine, so central to Thomas Jefferson's idea of a University, has had a long-standing commitment to medical ethics and studies in this field. 
This activity began formally in 1970 through the collaboration of Thomas D. Hunter, MD, who was Dean of the Medical School, and Joseph F. Fletcher, who was UVA's first Professor of Medical Ethics. Together they founded the Program in Biology and Society and the weekly Medical Center Hour in 1971, which still continues. Joseph Fletcher is regarded by many as the original pioneer in early bioethics, a field that drew on his wide-ranging work in the 1950's, including his book Morals and Medicine (1954) often viewed as the first book on bioethics. In 1980, the School of Medicine was one of the first to invite a philosopher, E. Haavi Morreim, to enter the clinical setting for teaching, consultation, and other educational activities. The Center was founded in 1988 as a Division of the Department of Internal Medicine.
James F. Childress, is the Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics and Professor of Medical Education at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Institute for Practical Ethics. He served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, 1972-1975 and 1986-1994, as Principal of UVA's Monroe Hill College from 1988 to 1991, and as co-director of the Virginia Health Policy Center 1991-1999. In 1990 he was named Professor of the Year in the state of Virginia by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. Professor Childress' book (T.L. Beauchamp), Principles of Biomedical Ethics, originally published in 1979 and now in its 5th edition, is probably the most widely read and cited textbook in the field. Dr. Childress was a member of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and currently serves on the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
John C. Fletcher joined UVA's faculty in August, 1987, after serving the Clinical Center, NIH, from 1977 to 1987 as Chief of its Bioethics Program. A joint appointment in Religious Studies and Internal Medicine, and equal support by the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine were commitments by Dean Hugh Kelly and Dean Robert Carey to an interdisciplinary program. They also agreed that all ethics courses in the School of Medicine would be open to graduate and undergraduate students of the College. This is true today, except for the required course in clinical ethics for first year medical students.
In 1990, the Center became a Division in the Office of the Dean, School of Medicine, in order to serve the whole Health Sciences Center. The core faculty of the Center includes philosophers, physicians, lawyers, and historians. John Fletcher served as the first director until his partial retirement in 1997.
From the late 1960s, he conducted or co-led a number of studies of ethical issues in medical genetics, including national and international survey research with Dorothy C. Wertz. Dr. Fletcher also was an early contributor to the literature on the service of ethics consultation in health care and was the founding President of the Society for Bioethics Consultation (1986-89). In 2001 the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities presented him with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Further strengthening the University resources in bioethics, in 1993, John D. Arras joined UVA's faculty, arriving from Montefiore Medical Center and Barnard College in New York, where he established a reputation as a leading authority on clinical medical ethics. Arras assumed the Porterfield Professorship of Bioethics, a newly established chair with the goal of enhancing undergraduate bioethics education at the University. Arras' well known anthology, Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, recently entered its fifth edition.
Jonathan D. Moreno was appointed as the Emilie Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics, and Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics, in 1998, succeeding Dr. John C. Fletcher. He was formerly Professor of Pediatrics and of Medicine and Director of the Division of Humanities in Medicine at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Brooklyn.
Dr. Moreno is best known for his work on moral consensus in bioethics and on the history and ethics of clinical trials. His book, Deciding Together: Bioethics and Moral Consensus (1995), was the first full study of this subject. Moreno's co-authored textbook, Ethics in Clinical Practice, entered its second edition in 1999 with Aspen Publishers. His most recent book is Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans and was published in hardcover by W.H. Freeman in 1999, and in paperback by Routledge in 2001. In 2003 he published In the Wake of Terror: Medicine and Morality in a Time of Crisis (MIT Press), and, with John Arras, Robert Crouch and colleagues from the National Institutes of Health, Ethical and Regulatory Issues in Clinical Research (Johns Hopkins). He has served as senior staff to two presidential advisory committees and is currently president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
The Center's popular Master of Arts program in Bioethics has graduated dozens who have pursued careers in medicine, nursing, law, philosophy, theology, and other fields. Center faculty also participate in doctoral education through the departments of philosophy and religious studies. A number of prominent bioethicists have received their doctoral education at Virginia. Through the center's intensive course, "Developing Health Care Ethics Committees," dozens of professionals have received practical training in bioethics.
In August 2000, the Center helped introduce an innovative approach to educating medical students in ethics and humanities. The new lectures and small group discussions will emphasize the history and values of the profession in the first year of medical school, how these traditional values have been stressed by modernity in the second year, and how health care institutions respond to specific ethical problems in the third year. Medical students may enroll in independent study in bioethics in the fourth year.
The Center's intellectual life is vigorous. As a leading site of research in bioethics, the work of Center faculty is supported by both private foundations, such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Greenwall Foundation, and public sources, such as the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health. Special interests of center faculty include the ethics of clinical trials, surgical innovation ethics, problems of conflicts of interest in medicine, developments in bioethical theory, ethical and historical issues in genetics, and ethics in biodefense. Each year many well-known authorities on bioethics and related fields visit the center, giving both graduate and undergraduate students the opportunity to broaden their sense of the field.
As a concrete expression of its commitment to medical ethics and humanities at the University of Virginia, in March 2000, the Center and the Program of Humanities in Medicine were provided a beautiful suite of refurbished and expanded offices, a conference room, and a reception area, centrally located in the historic Barringer Building just across the street from Thomas Jefferson's "academical village."