ethics, life and work

‘Separation of private and work space was easy when they were divided by a train journey. Now two worlds have collided. I believe there are fascinating and revealing connections between who we are privately and the space we occupy professionally.’

Professor Bobbie Farsides, Professor of Clinical and Biomedical Ethics at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, was educated at the LSE. She is a founder editor of the Royal Society of Medicine journal Clinical Ethics, and a member of committees and working parties on topics such as ethics in palliative care, public health and medical research.

Bobbie Farsides, Professor of Clinical and Biomedical Ethics at BSMS but known to her friends as ‘an ethics girl’, delivered her inaugural lecture to an audience of over 150 people in April.

'My research looks at the experience of health care professionals working in such morally contested fields as stem cell research, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, foetal medicine and care for the dying. Scientists and clinicians working within these fields regularly confront ethical issues in their work and I am particularly interested in how their personal moral beliefs impact upon their professional decision making and their relationships with colleagues and clients. I have been able to look at this issue both empirically and theoretically within the context of a number of cross-disciplinary research projects.'

Professor Farsides acknowledged that ethical punditry is rife but recalled the philosophy that underlies her discipline. One of her early publications, for example, involved applying Locke’s theory of property to the issues of foetal transplantation. However, upon finding herself trying to strike up conversations at a bus stop after a day of lonely textual analysis, she took up her first teaching post and later began research with health care professionals.

She looked at ethics and communication in European palliative care, acted as Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee considering Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying and Terminal Illness Bill and spoke to bereaved families to report on ethical issues surrounding the retention of human organs after post mortem.

In a project looking at how healthcare professionals felt challenged by new genetic technologies for antenatal screening and foetal medicine, she and her colleagues found that many still felt conflicted about the work they were already doing. Professor Farsides noted that while healthcare professionals have little time to concentrate on their own needs to reflect and discuss, they were morally conservative and wanted technological advances only to proceed with care – in contrast to the frequent depictions of scientists in the media.

With the proviso that ‘developing moral vision also requires being able to tell when there is nothing there to be seen’, Professor Farsides concluded that her work is about helping people to map feasible moral change.

Listen to the lecture