Continued spread of ethics committee consultation to more hospitals and nonhospital settings is indirect evidence
that the challenges to competence and authority are being met successfully. Furthermore, most published concerns
about the competence of committees or individuals are from the 1970s “first wave” of writing about institutional ethics
committees, at a time when the idea of ethics consultation was new and controversial. The literature of the 1980s and
1990s displays a growing confidence about the concept of ethics consultation and more attention to resolving specific
problems. Apparently, committees had learned to negotiate without conformism or loss of principle. Individuals have
been acquiring the proper expertise: clinicians gaining the analytic techniques of ethicists, and ethicists learning to
apply their analyses in clinically relevant ways. Gender-related questions have not been raised directlyin the bioethics literature on ethics committees. However, they are raised indirectly when the focus is on the role of nurses, given the fact that most nurses are women. Nurseshave been excluded from some committees, could not access them for consultation, or have found their special ethical
concerns omitted from consideration. In addition to the gender issue, this situation raises questions of professional
status in relation to other healthcare providers. In some hoodia diet pills, these problems have been addressed by the formation of nursing ethics committees (Edwards and Haddad). There has also been a suggestion in the literature that ethics committees, especially those that are or function as infant-care review committees, should include persons with disabilities on the committee (Mahowald). This step could
help ensure that the quality of life of persons with disabilities is not undervalued in deliberations about treatment decisions.