Indiana University Center for Bioethics

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https://hdl.handle.net/1805/367

The Center’s mission is to provide leadership to advance the academic and public understanding of bioethics; to inform the development of social and public policy in health, research, and related fields; and to provide support for the provision of ethics services at Indiana University hospitals. The Center will fulfill its mission through research, education, and service as a university-wide entity.

The Indiana University Center for Bioethics was established on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in July 2001. The Center was initially created with funding from the Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN), which was established by a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. to the Indiana University School of Medicine. In-kind support is provided by the School of Liberal Arts and the School of Law. Although the Center is a recent addition to the IUPUI campus, it has a much longer history.

Comments or questions:

Gary Brackett.
IU Center for Bioethics
gkbracke@iu.edu

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Browsing Indiana University Center for Bioethics by Subject "Antineoplastic Agents, Hormonal"

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    Disclosure and rationality: comparative risk information and decision-making about prevention
    (Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 2009) Schwartz, Peter H.
    With the growing focus on prevention in medicine, studies of how to describe risk have become increasing important. Recently, some researchers have argued against giving patients "comparative risk information," such as data about whether their baseline risk of developing a particular disease is above or below average. The concern is that giving patients this information will interfere with their consideration of more relevant data, such as the specific chance of getting the disease (the "personal risk"), the risk reduction the treatment provides, and any possible side effects. I explore this view and the theories of rationality that ground it, and I argue instead that comparative risk information can play a positive role in decision-making. The criticism of disclosing this sort of information to patients, I conclude, rests on a mistakenly narrow account of the goals of prevention and the nature of rational choice in medicine.
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