The social psychology of amateur ethicists: blood product recall notification and the value of reflexivity
- 1Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA
- 2Department of Pediatrics and Neurology, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, Birmingham, AL, USA
- Dr J Wasserman, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, MS 41012, Holden Hall 158, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-1012, USA; jason.wasserman{at}ttu.edu
- Received 8 June 2007
- Revised 21 September 2007
- Accepted 2 October 2007
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to highlight ways in which institutional policymakers tend to insufficiently conceptualise their role as ethics practitioners. We use the case of blood product recall notification as a means of raising questions about the way in which, as we have observed it, discourse for those who make institutional ethics policies is constrained by routine balancing of simplified principles to the exclusion of reflexive practices—those that turn ethics reasoning back on itself. The latter allows ethics practitioners with comparatively little formal training to take ownership of traditional parameters, which define their discussions and ultimately ought to make them more insightful when doing ethics. Thus, in the midst of calls for more training to increase the competency of ethics committees, we suggest that an additional problem of how these lay ethicists conceive of their roles also needs to be addressed.
Footnotes
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Competing interests: None.
