Clinical ethics and the road less taken: mapping the future by tracking the past.

Clinical ethics, like the broader field of bioethics from which it emerg is at a critical crossroads in its unravelling with conflicting paths ahead. It can either claim its distinctive place in the clinical arena, insisting unapologetically upon certain minimal standards of professional training, practice and suitableness addressing head on debates about various designs of and methodological approaches to consultation, and establishing a shared vision of the view and meaning of the enterprise of clinical ethics itself. Or, it can deliver over into a hobby that untrained, albeit interested, and generally well-intentioned individuals can dabble in for gayety or even profit, ...