Bioethics seminar series to head Year of Health and Medicine

By Kristen Benjamin
Contributing Reporter

The university is kicking off its celebration of the medical school's centennial with the first seminar in a year long series called "Curing and Caring: The Present State and Future of Bioethics in America."

The seminars will include speakers with backgrounds in biology and medicine and will be part of "The Year of Health and Medicine."

The seminar is sponsored by the university's bioethics task force, which was created to promote student awareness about the ethical issues raised in medicine and biology.

According to Gordon Melson, dean of the graduate school and co-chair of the theme year, "bioethics may be defined as the study of value judgments pertaining to human contact in the area of biology (and biomedical science) and includes to those related to the practice of medicine."

"As medicine and biomedical science continues to develop, our society must be aware of and confront increasingly difficult ethical questions," Melson said. "Currently, Wake Forest University has no formal program in bioethics that is available to either the university or the local Winston-Salem community."

The first begins Sept. 26 with Terrance McConnell, a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an expert in biomedical ethics.

McConnell is part of the ethics committee for the Moses Cone Health Care System and is also the author of Inalienable Rights: The Limits of Consent in Medicine and the Law.

Other speakers will be brought to campus periodically throughout the year.

Allen Buchanan, a professor of philosophy and public policy at Duke University's Sanford Institute, was a staff member of the President's Commission on Medical Ethics. Buchanan is scheduled to speak Oct. 15.

David Orentlicher, a co-director of the Center for Law and Health at Indiana University and a member of the founding board for the American Association of Bioethics will speak later this fall.

"I feel it is important for people to understand and recognize that there are morals involved in medicine," sophomore Monique Moona said.

Norman Daniels, a professor at Harvard University teaching ethics and population health and Rebecca Dresser, a law professor at Washington University, will speak next spring. Melson is hopeful that the series will be a success.

"The seminars will facilitate a greater understanding among faculty, students and community members regarding how bioethics might provide a framework for better understanding of the many complexities confronting our world in the twenty-first century," he said.

"It is good that the university is focusing on bioethics ... although with the recent national scandals, the university might want to think of holding a few seminars on business ethics," sophomore James Gibbon, who plans to go into the medical field, said.