Since chronic diseases are the leading causes of mortality, morbidity, and health care expenditures in the US and other industrialized nations, it is important to understand whether bioethicists are paying adequate attention to issues related to chronic disease in their research and scholarship. To address this question, we analyzed a random sample of 1200 out of 16,854 articles published in five top bioethics journals from 2001 to 2024. The most common topic was patient-provider relationship (3…
Read moreSince chronic diseases are the leading causes of mortality, morbidity, and health care expenditures in the US and other industrialized nations, it is important to understand whether bioethicists are paying adequate attention to issues related to chronic disease in their research and scholarship. To address this question, we analyzed a random sample of 1200 out of 16,854 articles published in five top bioethics journals from 2001 to 2024. The most common topic was patient-provider relationship (34.9%), followed by theoretical bioethics (32.9%), health law, regulation, and politics (28.7%), research ethics (24.8%), and population issues (23.6%). Chronic disease was the 13th most common topic (out of 20), which places it in the 3rd quartile along with public health (10.8%), emerging technologies (10.4%), ethics consultation (9.9%), and infectious disease (9.1%). Although chronic disease is not among the least discussed topics in the bioethics literature, it is still a neglected topic. Bioethicists should pay greater attention to questions and concerns related to chronic disease and should highlight the relevance of their work for chronic illnesses and conditions. More research—empirical and conceptual—is needed to better understand bioethical issues related to chronic disease.
