The Emergence of Institutional Ethics Committees

Abstract

The institutional ethics committee an entity that many have long believed capable of solving many of the medical, legal, and ethical problems that exist in modern health care-is now being adopted by increasing numbers of institutions. Utilized sporadically since the 1970s, ethics committees began to receive renewed and heightened attention in late 1982. Cases such as those in Los Angeles where two physicians who were charged with first degree murder for removing, at the request of the family, intravenous feeding tubes, from a comatose, severely brain-damaged patient, the Infant Doe case from Bloomington, Indiana, and the more recent case of Baby Jane Doe from New York State, have generated an enormous amount of interest and publicity and provided a new impetus toward institutional ethics committees.