More than cautionary tales: the role of fiction in bioethics

July 1, 2009

Is there a role for fiction in explorations of ethics? Are words, as Conchis says, only for truth, for facts? Or is it perhaps the case that words can be used to help us reach a deeper truth—through fiction? This month the Journal of Medical Ethics features a form of publication rarely found in the pages of scholarly journals: the first instalment of a fictional “bioethics soap opera” designed to offer a somewhat different exploration of the issues that are the subject of the journal’s usual offerings. [Premium (Journal of Medical Ethics)]