Looking at It Wrong

Two articles in this issue of the Hastings Center Report push the boundaries of bioethics, but in radically different directions. The lead article offers a new understanding of clinical translation—the process, that is, of generating clinical tools from the theoretical understanding of disease developed in the laboratory. The topic is important because, as Kimmelman and London point out, clinical translation is widely held to be in trouble. In general, the feeling is that there's been lots of basic science on disease mechanisms over the last twenty years or so, but there's only a trickle of good new medications in the “drug pipeline.” Kimmelman and London's claim, crudely put, is that we’re looking at it wrong . In a second article, John Hardwig, author of one of the Report's more frequently mentioned articles, “Is There a Duty to Die?,” continues in somewhat that same surprising and maybe even contrarian vein by asking, in effect, whether there can ever be a duty to have an abortion .