Biographical / Historical

John Caldwell Fletcher was born in Bryan, Texas, and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. Both of his parents were deaf and his father was an Episcopal priest who did missionary and counseling work for the deaf. Fletcher graduated from Sewanee: the University of the South with a degree in English literature(1953). He married Adele Davis Woodall in Guntersville, Alabama on September 4, 1954 and they moved to Heidelberg, Germany for two years while Fletcher studied Dietrich Bonhoffer as a Fulbright Scholar. After their return to the United States, Fletcher was ordained as an Episcopal priest.

In the following years, he earned a Master's of Divinity from the Virginia Theological Seminary and a doctorate in Christian ethics from Union Theological Seminary in New York (1969. He served as Rector of Robert E. Lee Memorial Church (1960-1964), Chaplain of Washington & Lee University and associate professor of church and society at Virginia Theological Seminary(1966-1970). In 1970, he began Interfaith Metropolitan Theological Education Inc., dedicated to providing apprenticeships and reflection on ministry to a diverse student body. He later became the first formal chief of the bioethics program at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center (1977-1987) and the Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics/founding Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA (1987-1998).

Fletcher wrote two books, "Coping With Genetic Disorders: a Guide for Clergy and Parents" (1982) and "Ethics and Human Genetics: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" (1989), edited with sociologist Dorothy C. Wertz. The latter was the result of a groundbreaking, survey-based project, carried out in the late 1980s, that is still cited in 2017. He also authored dozens of papers and presented frequently on topics such as research on human subjects, genetic testing, assisted suicide and ethics consultation in health care organizations. Fletcher participated in the Virginia Bioethics Network, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee and development of the Master's Program in Clinical Ethics at the University of Virginia. He was President of the Board of Directors of the Society for Bioethics Consultation (1986-1988), Founding Fellow of the Hastings Center and a Senior Research Fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics (1975-1987). In 2001, the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities awarded Dr. Fletcher its lifetime achievement award

Bernstein, Adam, "John C. Fletcher; Biomedical Ethicist, Former Episcopal Priest," Washington Post Wednesday, June 2, 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8178-2004Jun1.html

Daily Progress, "Adele Fletcher." July 26, 2014. http://www.dailyprogress.com/obituaries/fletcher-adele/article_ac420792-1bc7-5928-85cc-57a56aab496a.html

Content Description

The types of documents primarily include case studies, scholarly papers, news clippings, email and posted correspondence, presentation materials and notes, biographical materials, policy statements, lecture and course materials, meeting minutes, publications, and court documents. Original dates for the materials range from 1883 to 2002, the bulk of which come from 1991-2000. Topics include human experimentation, ethics in health care, genetic testing, right-to-die and assisted suicide, fetal therapy, behavioral genetics, stem cells, ethics education, long-term care and organ donation.

Arrangement

The collection has been arranged in four Hollinger boxes. Most of the print materials in the collection were already arranged in labeled folders when they were received. The order and labeling that was found has been maintained. Loose material has been compiled into folders and labeled, keeping roughly the same position in the order of receipt. Slides CDs, 3.5 in floppy disks, zip disks and other non-print media remain unprocessed in Box 4. Although the collection is not organized topically or chronologically, much of the oldest material is in Box 1. There is some aggregation of material by topic, format and chronology, but no pervasive order.