Ethics and Diabetes

Specific aims include:

1. To investigate and inform ethical issues about islet cell transplantation.
2. To provide ethical guidance on emerging issues in the diabetes field such as immune tolerance.

As breakthroughs from the laboratory and new technologies are translated into clinical use at the bedside, difficult ethical issues for patients with diabetes have arisen. For example, who should be eligible for islet cell transplantation, when are protocols ready for testing, and who should the subjects be? Clinical medical ethics is a practical discipline that integrates ethical theory into clinical and research medicine. Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago was chosen for three consecutive years by Deans of American medical schools as the leading medical ethics program in the United States. Principal research contributions have come in three areas: studies of the doctor-patient relationship and the process of clinical and research decision-making; studies of how empirical clinical data should be used to reach ethical conclusions; and studies on the ethical basis of innovation in both medicine and surgery.