Joseph Lynch

It is widely acknowledged among those philosophers and theologians who have given the matter much thought that the fact of animal suffering challenges Theism in a distinctive way. Standard attempts to reconcile human suffering with a perfectly powerful and benevolent deity don’t seem to apply easily to the case of animals. Animals can hardly be said to deserve their suffering or be morally improved by it, nor is it generally supposed that animals will be compensated for their pain in an afterlife. On the face of it, then, animal pain appears to be a bothersome evil still left over when all the theodicy work is done. I would like to consider some of the attempts to deal with animal suffering in theodicy, showing why each ultimately fails. Rather than attempting to provide the successful theodicy myself, I will try to show what the theodicies reveal about the relationship between Theism and moral attitudes toward animals

In May 2011, the clinical ethics group of the Center for Ethics at Washington Hospital Center launched a 40-hour, three and one-half day Clinical Ethics Immersion Course. Created to address gaps in training in the practice of clinical ethics, the course is for those who now practice clinical ethics and for those who teach bioethics but who do not, or who rarely, have the opportunity to be in a clinical setting. “Immersion” refers to a high-intensity clinical ethics experience in a busy, urban, acute care hospital. During the Immersion Course, participants join clinical ethicists on working rounds in intensive care units and trauma service. Participants engage in a videotaped role-play conversation with an actor. Each simulated session reflects a practical, realistic clinical ethics case consultation scenario. Participants also review patients’ charts, and have small group discussions on selected clinical ethics topics. As ethics consultation requests come into the center, Immersion Course participants accompany clinical ethicists on consultations. Specific to this pilot, because participants’ evaluations and course faculty impressions were positive, the Center for Ethics will conduct the course twice each year. We look forward to improving the pilot and establishing the Immersion Course as one step towards addressing the gap in training opportunities in clinical ethics