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An Appreciation of Jim Childress on the Occasion of his Lifetime Achievement Award John D. Arras -- University of Virginia (Published in ASBH Exchange , Spring 2005, vol. 8, no. 1 Within the past year, Jim Childress has received recognition for outstanding lifetime achievement and contributions both to the field of bioethics, via the ASBH, and to University of Virginia , where he has spent most of his academic career. These awards fittingly honor a life lived in the service of the highest ideals, a life lived in pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, and community. Jim Childress is an especially fitting recipient of this award because he was, along with a small handful of other towering figures, one of the very architects of our field -- of how we think, write and talk about moral problems on the borderland between medicine, the biological sciences, ethics, law, and the medical humanities. In order to emerge in the 1970s from a primal soup of warring moral theologies, bioethics needed a common language, a lingua franca , that could facilitate common moral reasoning in the vast space between intuitive case judgments and our ultimate theoretical or religious beliefs. The field needed, in other words, a method or approach that focused, not on the rival and incompatible claims of consequentialists and deontologists, but rather on common "mid-level" principles that could elicit widespread agreement among people of different backgrounds, professions, and religious beliefs. The field also needed a language better suited to doing ethics in the public square. Although the wisdom of figures like Joseph Fletcher and Paul Ramsey exerted powerful and inspiring influence on this budding field, their theological and sectarian mode of expression was not well suited to the needs of a diverse and pluralistic secular democracy. Jim Childress and Tom Beauchamp played instrumental roles in developing and refining this lingua franca in 1979 through the publication of their indispensable book, The Principles of Bioethics, now in its 5 th edition. This book has effectively educated hundreds of thousands of students, professors, physicians, nurses, and other members of caring professions in the basics and finer points of bioethics. Although this book has attracted quite a bit of criticism from disparate points on the ideological and scholarly spectrum, an inevitable fate for the leading book in any field, it remains, I believe, the best and most authoritative single volume guide to bioethics available anywhere. During the nearly 30 years that Jim and Tom have been carefully and continuously rethinking the foundations of bioethics through their monumental book, Jim has also been enormously prolific as the author of countless articles in peer reviewed journals and invited symposia. Indeed, if there is a high level conference, a special issue of a journal, or a top-notch book project on some hot topic, you can expect to see Jim Childress's name among the contributors. His scholarly contributions to the field of bioethics have thus been both formative and encyclopedic. All of Jim's work is known for its rigorous standards of argument, its carefully nuanced and comprehensive analyses of complex moral problems, and, perhaps most remarkably, for its exceptional fairness towards opposing positions. One of the less attractive features of the inhabitants of what Hegel called the "academic zoo," is our tendency to develop positions and then close our eyes to any evidence or argument that might challenge them. All too often, no sooner do academics make their mark than sclerosis of the concepts immediately sets in. What distinguishes the work of Childress (and Beauchamp) from most other denizens of this academic zoo is their enthusiasm for grappling with rival points of view and their extreme generosity towards their own most persistent critics. Each new edition of Principles thus bears witness to its authors' remarkable commitment to self-criticism and constructive engagement with the community of scholars. At the University of Virginia , Jim Childress is recognized as an outstanding and inspiring teacher of bioethics and religious studies. In dramatic contrast to the unfortunate rule in contemporary higher education - that the more illustrious a professor becomes, the less he or she teaches - Jim Childress has maintained a very demanding teaching schedule in the midst of a highly demanding professional life. Generations of students here have taken his legendary introductory course, "Theology, Ethics, and Medicine," and many of them have gone on to make their own distinguished contributions to this field. Jim not only offers his staple courses and seminars on a regular basis, but he also actively collaborates with faculty from other departments and schools within the university in the creation of new and exciting interdisciplinary ventures, ranging from University Seminars for first year students to law school classes on environmental and public health ethics. Jim Childress is anything but your typical self-protective, bunkered scholar. On the home front, he is well known for his constant and dedicated role in the life of Brown College , a distinguished residential college at UVA. Transcending his work in biomedical ethics, he has recently founded the Institute for Practical Ethics, which convenes eminent scholars from all over the university to work jointly on matters of public ethical concern in such areas as business, law, the environment, architecture, politics, and the media. In brief, Jim Childress is the quintessential model of what a university professor should be. In recognition of his commitments to teaching and service, the University of Virginia recently bestowed upon Jim its Jefferson Award for lifetime achievement. On the national front, Jim is perhaps best known (in terms of service) for his highly public contributions to such eminent national bodies as President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC), the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), and, most recently, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC). I believe that Jim is recruited for such high-level positions not only because of his impressive scholarly grasp of the issues, but also and even more importantly for his ability to act as a beacon of sanity, probity, and enlightened common sense on the roiling seas of political and ethical turmoil. In conversation with many of the other members of these distinguished panels, I often hear that they regard Jim Childress as one of their most valuable members. He always does more than his fair share of the work, and he always helps to foster an environment of mutual respect and accommodation among fellow commissioners of vastly differing ideological, religious, ethical and political persuasions. As a quietly serious Quaker (what other kind is there?), Jim often seems to be congenitally incapable of the nastiness and partisanship to which most of us succumb from time to time, yet he still manages to maintain a steely resolve in advancing his visions of good policy and the good society. In sum, then, we are all fortunate to have in Jim Childress a scholar of towering international reputation, a revered and dedicated teacher, and an indefatigable contributor to the local, national and international scholarly and policy communities. I feel deeply fortunate to have known and worked with Jim Childress all these years. I cannot think of anyone associated with the field of bioethics who is more deserving of the great honor bestowed upon him by his colleagues and friends within ASBH. |