Benchside Ethics Consultation Service

The Benchside Ethics Consultation Service (BECS) is a service for Stanford University researchers, developed through the combined efforts of an interdisciplinary group of scholars within CIRGE and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. The program in Benchside Ethics Consultation is analogous to the bedside consultation service bioethicists and ethics committees have long provided for real-time discussion, analysis and resolution of ethical issues in the clinical setting; BECS, however, focuses specifically on issues arising from laboratory and clinical research.

The program is the first of its kind in that it allows for proactive identification of important ethical and policy issues in biomedical research. Through early and direct interactions among ethicists, philosophers, social scientists, lawyers, biomedical scientists and others, BECS aims to facilitate discussions with researchers about as-yet-undefined, cutting-edge science as it unfolds.

BECS was established as part of CIRGE with a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Department of Energy (DOE). It is also supported by a grant from the NIH as part of Stanford’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) and Spectrum - The Stanford Center for Clinical and Translational Education and Research.

Consultants:

Mildred Cho, PhD
CIRGE PI
SCBE Associate Director
Associate Professor (Research) of Pediatrics
(bio/cv)

Hank Greely, JD
Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and, by courtesy, of Genetics
(bio/cv)

David Magnus, PhD
SCBE Director
Thomas A. Raffin Professor in Medicine and Biomedical Ethics
Co-Chair of the Stanford Hospital and Clinics Ethics Committee
(bio/cv)

Christopher Scott, PhD
Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics
Director of the Stanford Program on Stem Cells in Society
(bio/cv)