U. S. Bioethics Commissions

Scholars, students, and educators interested in materials from U.S. National Commissions on Bioethics will find a rich resource at the Bioethics Research Library. The Library has transcripts, reports, briefing and agenda books, and related materials. The Library has provided reports and appendices for various digitization efforts so that full-text of these historic documents could be made available online. Links are provided below for those resources which can be found online.

We invite you to visit the Library to use any materials of interest to you. In order to best prepare for your visit, we ask that you contact the Library in advance so that we can be certain to have the documents you wish to use readily available. Please email bioethics@georgetown.edu or call 202-687-3885 to describe your research work, to let us know when you will visit, and to identify the specific materials you wish to review.

The Bioethics Research Library holds original documents from the earliest U.S. Presidential Commissions about bioethics as well as archived websites containing reports and transcripts from more recent Commissions.

• Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, 2009-
• President's Council on Bioethics, 2001-2009
• National Bioethics Advisory Commission, 1996-2001
• Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, 1994-1995
• Biomedical Ethical Advisory Committee, 1988-1990
• President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and in Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1978-1983
• National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1974-1978