Global health inequalities and bioethics

What moral issues belong at the heart of bioethics rather than on the periphery of the field? Although priority setting and resource allocation in medicine and health care are important topics for bioethicists, few publications in bioethics explicitly address what priorities ethicists should have when crafting research agendas, teaching, publishing, and engaging in public debate. Amid a sea of possibilities, which topics should bioethicists address and strive to bring to the attention of journalists, policy makers, health care providers, citizens, and politicians? Furthermore, just who is entitled to make such judgments about the relative merits of particular domains of research? Should funding agencies seek to influence research programs in bioethics? Should directors of bioethics centers play leading roles in establishing pathways for more junior scholars to follow? Does the concept of academic freedom mean that bioethicists are entitled to cultivate whichever academic gardens they choose to till? How much scholarship in bioethics is driven by careerism and the reward structures of academe rather than larger moral and social concerns?.