FLETCHER, John C(aldwell) 1931-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 1, 1931, in Bryan, TX; died from drowning, May 27, 2004, in Keswick, VA. Priest, educator, and author. Fletcher was well known as a biomedical ethicist, as well as a religious educator who encouraged theology students to gain hands-on experience with congregations. His education credentials included a B.A. from the University of the South in 1953, an M.Div. from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1956, and a Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary in 1969. Ordained an Episcopal priest in 1957, Fletcher worked in various churches in Alabama, Virginia, and New York before joining the faculty at Virginia Theological Seminary in 1966. Deciding that students needed more than a textbook education to prepare them to minister to their congregations, he left this post to found Interfaith Metropolitan Theological Education Inc. in 1971. Students of what became known as Inter/Met received firsthand training in various houses of worship so that they could better deal with the problems they would later face as priests working with real people. Unfortunately, financial difficulties forced the school to close in 1977. Fletcher wrote of his experiences in his 1977 book, Inter/Met: Bold Experiment in Theological Education. He next moved on to the Alban Institute and was also chief of the bioethics program at the National Institutes of Health. As advances in medicine increased in pace, he became increasingly concerned about issues involving such issues as abortion, surrogate parenting, and genetic screening; he published a book on the subject of genetic disorders with 1982's Coping with Genetic Disorders: A Guide for Clergy and Parents. Other works by Fletcher include writing and editing, with others, such books as Ethics and Human Genetics: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (1989) and the second edition of Introduction to Clinical Ethics (1997), as well as coediting the books Fetal Diagnosis and Therapy, Science Ethics and the Law (1988), Ethics Consultation in Health Care (1989), and The Nature and Prospect of Bioethics (2003). Fletcher worked as chief of bioethics program at the NIH's Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center until 1987, leaving this post to become professor of biomedical ethics at the University of Virginia until his retirement in 1999. His work was recognized by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, which presented him with a lifetime achievement award in 2001.

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Washington Post, June 2, 2004, p. B7.