No easy answers for ethicist

For a man honored by the American Medical Association for "leadership in medical ethics," Salt Lake City's Dr. Jay A. Jacobson certainly is disarming about any suggestion he might be more ethical, or less, than the next M.D.

"I have no corner on ethical behavior," Jacobson suggests modestly. "You wouldn't say to a nutritionist, 'How did you get to be so well-nourished?' What I'm involved in is about the study of ethics as nourishment is about the study of nutrition."

But if you don't have to necessarily be healthy to talk about healthy foods, or necessarily ethical to talk about ethics, there's still no sidestepping the fact that by singling him out as the recipient of its "Dr. Isaac Hayes and Dr. John Bell Award for Leadership in Medical Ethics and Professionalism" at its recent convention in Atlanta, the AMA has made Utah's Jacobson look imperially ethical, if only by association.

Out of thousands of doctors nationwide involved in the delicate, ticklish and often bombastic world of medical ethics — with topics ranging from stem cell research to cloning to right-to-die to treatment of the indigent to everything in between — it was Jacobson who got the polished cherry-wood plaque and a nice round of applause.

He's brought the plaque back to his office at LDS Hospital and is now in the process of deciding which wall to hang it on.

"It is nice to be acknowledged by your peers," he says. "But I have to say, this is a reflection of a very big group effort (here in Utah) in medical ethics. Some of the people involved in our community were kind enough to nominate me for the award. I'm just a small part of a very big picture."

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Jacobson isn't a simple interview. He thinks before he talks, and his answers to even the most innocuous of questions are thoughtful and probing in their own right, devoid of short-cut responses. He's no evening news sound bite. Spend an hour with him and two things become obvious: He is passionate about what he does and, like him, his area of expertise is not simple. Medical ethics deals with genuine life-and-death issues, few of which come packaged with answers in black and white.

It was the onrush of AIDS in the mid-1980s that opened Jacobson's eyes to the complicated world of medical ethics. As chairman of the house staff at LDS Hospital, he listened during morning report as physicians and surgeons questioned whether they should treat patients with a disease so easily communicable and dangerous. Where did their responsibility start and end?