Coming to America: Bioethical Training at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and the Establishment of Medical Ethics in Germany

Between 1987 and 1995, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics held a number of training courses specifically addressing German physicians and scholars engaged in the establishment of medical ethics in West Germany. These courses were linked to the annual Intensive Bioethics Course the institute had been organizing since 1975. During the 1980s, the perspective of bioethical training began to shift toward an international audience. Through the fundraising skills and organizational efforts of Hans-Martin Sass, a German philosopher and senior research scholar at the institute, the focus eventually shifted toward the situation in Germany, where interest in bioethics was emerging but infrastructure and knowledge were lacking. Based on extensive archival research in the US and Germany, this paper retraces the history of German participation in the Kennedy Institute's bioethical training courses and analyzes the impact this experience had on the institute's outlook as well as on the development of German medical ethics.