Bioethics and the body politic

... To the extent that bioethics is a social movement, we have been successful in having brought to the table issues that are worthy of policy initiatives. We have sensitized a highly medicalized culture to the limits of that science and to its humane purpose. As some of the insights of the movement are being transformed by social policy, we must assume a vigilant posture: to know, to guide, to criticize, to initiate. This Health Policy Watch section is a vehicle for that endeavor.