Latest Center News
Posted 20 November 2009
Greetings Bioethics Center Members,
*There will be no Friday Newsletter next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Please note that today’s newsletter includes Bioethics Center and campus events for the week after Thanksgiving.
*Congratulations to past Bioethics Center Intern Carolyn Brokowski (2005 - 2007) who has just been named the Executive Editor of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics at the Yale Law School.
*The crew of CBS 60 Minutes recently spent several days with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center’s Palliative Care Team to produce a segment called “The Cost of Dying in America”, airing this coming Sunday (Nov. 22) at 7:00 pm (or right after the ball game). The CBS cover story is available here.
*Resources for those interested in the field of sustainable food:
Online listing of Sustainable Food Jobs
Online listing of internships and other opportunities
*Latest from The Hastings Center: providing informed consent to participate in research is the foundation of the ethical conduct of research. It is based on three components: adequate information; a competent decision-maker; and a voluntary decision process. Yet existing literature on informed consent has focused extensively on the information disclosed and how well it is communicated, while the nature of the requirement of voluntariness has yet to be fully explored. Two related articles recently published in Hastings Center publications by Paul S. Appelbaum, Charles W. Lidz, and Robert Klitzman address the doctrine of informed consent with special focus on the voluntary decision process. Please see the November-December 2009 issue of IRB: Ethics & Human Research for their article titled "Voluntariness of Consent to Research: A Preliminary Empirical Investigation," which can be read or downloaded free (registration required). And for additional reading on this subject, see the related article (subscription required) published in the January-February 2009 issue of the Hastings Center Report.
*Also, the latest Hastings Center Report contains a set of essays on how comparative effectiveness research should be used, should it lead to clinical care guidelines, and if so, what form should they take. Essayists include: Susan Gilbert, Richard Payne, Pauline Chen, Nancy Berlinger, Anne Lederman Flamm, Harald Schmidt and Julia Kreis. Also, the need for better evidence in evaluating the risks of medical interventions during pregnancy is the subject of an article in this issue by Anne Drapkin Lyerly. In evaluating risk during pregnancy, "recommendations, guidelines, and advice should be based on evidence, not on unrealistic expectations, dread, or denial...."
*Past Bioethics Center Summer Intern Jennifer Brown (2007) found an article on a recent case in Britain involving a severely ill newborn. "There are many online versions of this story. I have read through several, and this one seems to paint a more family-centric portrait rather than a mother wanting to let her child die versus a father wanting to keep their child alive sensationalism to pull in readers."
*The ASPCA is sponsoring a bill titled "The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act," a Federal bill that would phase out the common practice of constantly feeding antibiotics to food animals when they aren't sick. By keeping animals on these drugs all the time, factory farms can become ever more overcrowded and unsanitary while circumventing the disease outbreaks that these poor conditions ordinarily would produce. Therefore, curbing the use of antibiotics may prove to be an incentive to raise animals using more humane and sustainable methods. It is not only an animal welfare issue; it is also an issue of human health. Overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture is possibly contributing to the increase in antibiotic-resistant human diseases.
*Study Abroad Program on Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC) introduces an eight-week Study Abroad Program, focusing on Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Through professional training, hands-on learning, and cultural immersion, students will embark on experiencing how global climate change influences sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Apply online now for summer 2010! Click here for further information.
*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.
-Carol
