Commentary on the Olivieri symposium.

The Canadian Bioethics Society has taken some constructive steps in its attempt to learn from the Olivieri case W e would like to thank the authors and editors of the JME's minisymposium on the Olivieri case in the February 2004 issue of the journal for continuing and extending the dialogue about this important challenge to the North American bioethics community. This minisymposium is of special interest to us as members of the Canadian Bioethics Society's (CBS) working group on employment standards for bioethics. We are members of this working group precisely because we believe that most of us in the Canadian bioethics community ought to do more to respond to situations such as the Olivieri/Apotex affair. We welcome the opportunity to continue to learn from the case and to strengthen our Canadian community of bioethicists. Our working group came into being as a formal body at the 1999 annual meeting of the CBS when a motion was passed establishing the working group on employment standards for bioethics. The purpose of the working group was, and is, to examine the issues of ethicists' roles and responsibilities and the environment in which ethicists, particularly those practising in a non-tenured environment, work. We have been endeavouring to grapple with a number of the kinds of issues raised in the minisymposium, including accountability on the part of both bioethicists and the organisations employing them; standards of practice in bioethics; protection for whistleblowers; and how to respond to problems inherent in the moral climate of the organisations in which we work.