MARK KUCZEWSKI and KRISTI KIRSCHNER SPECIAL ISSUE: BIOETHICS & DISABILITY The relationship between the work of bioethicists and that of disability studies scholars and activists is only now beginning to be explored. 1,2 This special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics is an attempt to rectify that situation. We believe that one should not see disability as just one more topic for bioethicists to take up, much as they would take up the ethical issues involved with identifying a correlation between a particular gene and certain diseases. Rather, bioethics must approach disability as new land that is inextricably linked with traditional terrain yet, somehow, foreign. The essays in this special issue are an important step in that direction. BIOETHICS AND DISABILITY: A CIVIL WAR? Contemporary bioethics has largely evolved in response to two kinds of problems, misconduct by biomedical researchers and forgoing of life- sustaining treatment. As a result, bioethicists probably have a strong predisposition to be very expansive in terms of interpreting similar ethical questions in terms of end-of-life decisions and to readily apply the frame- work from research ethics, that of informed consent. Although some bioethicists will disagree with our analysis, 3,4 we believe that this histori- cally conditioned intellectual predisposition has made it difficult for bioethicists to fully appreciate the ethical and social policy issues posed by disability. For many years, disability activist groups such as Not-Dead-Yet have blistered bioethicists with criticism. 5 More recently, activists have found a manifesto in Wesley Smith’s book, The Culture of Death. 6 Smith argues that a utilitarian ethos has overtaken bioethicists with the result that they have become advocates of eliminating the infirm and disabled under the rubric of patient rights. Bioethicists and disability activists have squared off in various capacities over particular court cases involving withdrawal of medical treatment. 7 However, the dominant response to these engagements has not been increased dialogue but a general insistence that misunder- standing is at the root of these disagreements and bioethicists need to Theoretical Medicine 24: 455–458, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.