The Institute on Human Values in Medicine: its role and influence in the conception and evolution of bioethics

For ten years, 1971-1981, the Institute on Human Values in Medicine (IHVM) played a key role in the development of Bioethics as a field. We have written this history and analysis to bring to new generations of Bioethicists information about the development of their field within both the humanities disciplines and the health professions. The pioneers in medical humanities and ethics came together with medical professionals in the decade of the 1960s. By the 1980s Bioethics was a fully recognized discipline. We show the role that IHVM programs played in defining the field, training faculty and helping schools to develop programs. We review, the beginnings of the IHVM in the crucible of social and technological change that led to the establishment of the IHVM's parent organization, the Society for Health and Human Values. We then turn to the IHVM programs through which Faculty members received fellowships to explore new crossovers between the humanities and the health professions. We have not only described the Fellows Program as it existed in 1973-1980, but have completed a survey of the fellows a quarter of a century after they held their fellowships. We describe other IHVM programs designed to facilitate the initiation and development of new humanities programs, to explore conceptual issues between medicine and five humanities fields, to conduct issue driven or educational method conferences and to advance humanities programs into graduate education through the Directors of Medical Education.