Difficult Doctors and Rational Fears (Report‪)‬

Should the doing of bioethics require the reading of novels? No, unless we believe that fiction trumps nonfiction as a means of exploring complex issues in medicine and the life sciences, and also that writers of novels have a lock on the arts-and-humanities department of the moral imagination. And it's hard to get science right--convincing, not distracting--in a literary novel, even as plot-driven genre fiction may rely on biotechnological twists. So, let's narrow our scope to the care of the sick, and to medical ethics. Should the development of our personal capacity for empathy with those who suffer--with those who are sick, dying, frightened, threatened, weary, or in need of care and compassion for some other reason--include the reading of novels (and other fiction) in addition to reading nonfiction, discussing difficult cases, or writing personal narratives about our own experiences? If so, does it matter which novels?