From cloning to euthanasia to managed health care, numerous important and complicated issues have surfaced recently in the field of bioethics.
This Friday and Saturday the University will be hosting the second National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference, which brings together students and researchers from throughout the country to discuss these and other bioethics-related topics.
"The point of the conference is to put undergraduates from around the country in touch with each other and encourage them to stay active in the field" of bioethics, said Jonathan Moreno, Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics.
In addition, the conference provides an opportunity "to bring attention to the fact that the University of Virginia has an excellent bioethics program," fourth-year College student Planning Committee member Shelley Cavalieri said.
"There are amazing and diverse faculty right at hand" at the University, Cavalieri said.
The conference will begin with open sessions featuring a keynote speaker in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium both Friday and Saturday mornings at 9:00.
Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics and Trustee Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania will give Friday's keynote speech, entitled, "The Ethical Challenges of Genetics: Gene Testing, Gene Therapy and Gene Cloning."
Daniel Callahan, Director of International Programs for the Hastings Center, will speak Saturday on medical progress and health care equity.
The conference will feature approximately 20 speakers. Speakers from outside the University will include Callahan, Caplan and Ezekiel Emanuel, oncologist and bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health.
University faculty members participating include Moreno, John Arras, biomedical ethics and philosophy professor; James Childress, religious studies and medical education professor; and Richard Bonnie, director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy.
"One of the most important benefits is to put undergraduates from all over the country in touch with such people, so instead of reading about them in a textbook, they can interact with them," Arras said.
The conference will include panel discussions and case studies on stem cell research, issues at the end of life, public health and confidentiality, organ allocation and genetics, Bonnie said.
Arras added that the conference covered "a nice broad spectrum" of issues, including cutting edge problems like genetics and cloning, difficult issues like ethical norms in international research and "meat and potatoes economic problems" like managed care.
One of the important issues that will be discussed, Moreno said, will be the future of human gene therapy and the impact of 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger's death last year during gene therapy treatment at the University of Pennsylvania.
Gelsinger's death resulted in the shutdown of Penn's gene therapy program and several other programs voluntarily shutting down, Moreno said.
Another issue to be discussed at the conference is public health. Unlike many bioethical issues, public health concentrates on the maximization of the wellbeing of the entire population instead of on the individual, Arras said.
"Issues related to public [health] have not really been in the mainstream" of bioethics and there is "a great deal of interest," Bonnie said. "The focus of bioethics has been on the rights of the individual and the cornerstone of public health is a population orientation, which requires a different ethical framework."
The conference offers the opportunity for attention to be brought to such non-mainstream issues.
"The issues that have been on the back burner, we're trying to put those issues on the front burner," he said.
Another topic to be addressed is ethical guidelines for international medical research, he added. Often, there is American-sponsored research abroad, which can lead to ethical difficulties, Moreno said. The International Research Panel will consider issues concerning "the real or apparent exploitation of people in those countries in medical research," he said.
Through the discussion of these and other issues, the conference will attempt to "energize students to continue to study in the field," he said.
The conference was organized primarily by undergraduate students in the University's Bioethics Society.
After attending the first National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference at Princeton University last year, a group of students decided they wanted to have the conference at the University this year. With the help of four faculty members, 12 students have been working since last spring to arrange the conference, Cavalieri said.
"We're excited for it to be happening this weekend. It's taken a lot of people a lot of effort," she said.
"The faculty think that the students have done a really masterful job," Arras said.
Future conferences of this type are likely, he said.
"I'm sure that this will go on. Students are coming from all over the country and some from other countries as well," he added.
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