Latest Center News
Greetings Bioethics Center Members,
*Newly-minted UK lawyer Elizabeth Watts is sending us some articles she's writing on bioethical issues. Click here to find her first on autism reforms in the UK and US. It will be of interest to those studying both comparative law and disability issues.
*Mark Your Calendars! Yale's undergraduate Bioethics Society is sponsoring a campus "Bioethics Day" on January 29th, 2010. Director Alissa Wassung has envisioned a day of lectures and panel presentations that will introduce the student body to the field of bioethics. The panels will consist of experts and students. So far, panel topics will include reproductive rights, euthanasia, and stem cells; others are in the planning stages now.
*The Forum on Religion and Ecology's newsletter has a new design (http://www.yale.edu/religionandecology). Along with religion and ecology news and developments from around the world and listings of upcoming events and conferences in the field, the newsletter will contain information on the upcoming United National Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (December 7-18, 2009) and specific links to climate change developments in three additional sections: statements from world religions on climate change; climate change science; and climate change ethics (essays on the ethical dimensions of proposed solutions to global and local environmental problems and analysis of equity and justice issues in climate change policy.) Our Environmental Ethicists-in-Residence Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim direct The Forum on Religion and Ecology.
*New vegan eating options are coming onto the market! Read more about new gourmet meat substitutes here, and about new cheese substitutes here.
*News from The Hastings Center: Tom Murray (president of The Hastings Center), Karen Maschke (a research scholar at the Center), and Angela Wasunna (a former researcher at the Center who is now assistant director of international affairs at Pfizer) are editors of a new book just published by Johns Hopkins University Press titled "Performance-Enhancing Technologies in Sports: Ethical, Conceptual, and Scientific Issues." The book, based on a Hastings center research project, covers the historical and cultural context of enhancement in sport, ethical implications, and the science -- including the prospect of genetic enhancement. Chapters are written by scientists, ethicists, and athletes themselves who have become researchers. "The book critically examines the arguments for and against allowing doping in sport, including the claim that attempting to draw a line between doping and other things athletes do to improve their performance is not just fruitless but also misguided," says Tom Murray. "At the heart of the ethical and philosophical differences over doping are different views about the meaning of sport itself." Click here for more details.
*The Hastings Center received the first ever Cornerstone Award from the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities on October 17, at the Society's annual meeting. The Cornerstone Award "recognizes outstanding contributions by an institution that has helped shape the direction of the fields of bioethics and/or the medical humanities." In presenting the award, ASBH president Hilde Lindemann, a Hastings Center Fellow and former research scholar there, said, "As a Hastings Center alumna, I am doubly delighted to see the Center receive this well-deserved and groundbreaking tribute."
*Save the Date: The Bioethics Center's Annual Margaret A. Farley Lecture will be given on Tuesday, November 17th, at 4 pm, at The Institution for Social & Policy Studies (tiered conference room). Our speaker will be LeRoy Walters, the Joseph P. Kennedy Senior Professor of Christian Ethics at the Kennedy Institute, Georgetown University. His topic will be: "Dietrich Bonhoeffer and People with Disabilities: A German Theologian Confronts Nazi Eugenics and Euthanasia." Click for short bio information for both Professor Margaret Farley and Professor LeRoy Walters.
-Carol
