Mapping Approaches to Ethicist Engagement: The VIPER Framework

Abstract: In recent years, bioethicists and funders have increasingly embraced the notion of “embedded ethics,” wherein a professional trained in ethics is embedded among scientific or medical researchers. However, despite the enthusiasm for embedded ethics, there has been little work from bioethics to critically consider the goals and values of embedded ethics, what it entails from a practical perspective, and how it relates to other forms of ethicist engagement.
To fill these gaps, we begin by reviewing the historical roots of embedded ethics, which emerged from literatures in Responsible Research and Innovation studies. Next, we present a novel framework for mapping five key features of ethicist engagement: (1) Value, which concerns how ethicists, researchers, and organizations view the value or importance of the ethicist-researcher-organization relationship; (2) Integration, which conceptualizes the manner and extent to which an ethicist is integrated or immersed with the research team; (3) Purpose, which concerns the aims or goals of ethicist engagement; (4) Extension, which maps the temporal aspects of ethicist engagement, including the phase/stage at which the ethicist becomes involved and the duration of that involvement; and (5) Resource, which tracks both the extent to which an ethicist is independent as well as the size and extent of the investment required to conduct ethicist engagement.
Next, we utilize our “VIPER” framework to map and compare embedded ethics with other approaches to ethicist engagement, such as ethics parallel research and ethics consulting. We conclude by examining how VIPER can be used to disentangle different embedded ethics models.

Anna Wexler, PHD – Assistant Professor, Medical Ethics & Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania