Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care

Bioethics Bulletin

Editor: Tim Madigan
June 1996
Volume Three, Number Six

Co-Directors: Gerald Logue, MD and Stephen Wear, PhD
Secretary: Lisa Bolten
Research Associate: Charles Jack, MA
Address: Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care
Veteran's Affairs Medical Center
3495 Bailey Avenue Buffalo, NY 14215

Telephone: 862-3412 FAX: 862-4748
Website: http://wings.buffalo.edu/faculty/research/bioethics/
E-mail sent to Lisa BoltenLBolten@ubmedc.buffalo.edu.

Newsletter Distribution

The Center newsletter can be delivered to you via e-mail or fax. If you would like to receive the newsletter over the Internet, please forward your request to Jack Freer, MD 887-5186; e-mail: jfreer@ubmedb.buffalo.edu. If you would like to receive it by fax, call Lisa Bolten at 862-3412 and tell her your fax number. We encourage the use of e-mail and fax distribution rather than paper for the newsletter. Please let us know if there are any people you would like to have placed on our mailing list.

Upcoming Center Meetings

The Center currently has three committees: Community Affairs, Education and Research. All Center members are welcome to participate in these committees.

Center Reading Group

The Center has established a second reading and research group (beyond the "Health Care Policy Group"), the purpose of which is to discuss in-progress publications and encourage new publications mad allied research activities. There will be two meetings held in May, at the Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Road, between Maple and Rensch Roads (look for the twin red-and-white gates). On Wednesday, June 12th at 4:00 PM, Dr. Bogda Koczwara of Roswell Park will give a talk about the ethics of patient decision-making. On Wednesday, June 26th at 4:00 PM, "Bioethics Bulletin" editor Tim Madigan will review the new book by Philip Kitcher, The Lives to Come, which details the ethical dilemmas raised by genetic engineering. The talks are open to any interested participants. Also, if you would like to give a presentation to the reading group, please contact Tim Madigan at 636-7571 or by e-mail: timmadigan@aol.com.

Upcoming Lectures

Tuesday, June 4. "The Life and Death of Elderly Patients." Presenter: Steven H. Miles, MD, Center for Biomedical Ethics, University of Minnesota. 1:00 PM - 4:30 PM. Hospice Buffalo, Mitchell Campus Conference Center, 225 Como Park Blvd, Cheektowaga. This conference is open to all interested parties but will be particularly helpful for practicing physicians and medical trainees, as well as nurses, and other allied health professions who care for elderly patients at the end of life. Dr. Miles is a geriatrician/ethicist who has spoken and written widely about biomedical ethics. He was the ethics consultant (and subsequently the primary physician) for Helga Wanglie, the elderly vegetative patient whose family insisted upon continued mechanical treatment, despite the medical staff's claim that such treatment was "futile." For details, contact Jack Freer, MD, phone: 887-4852; fax: 887-5186; e-mail: jfreer@ubmedb.buffalo.edu.

Thursday, June 6. "Handling Stress at Home and in the Workplace." Presenter: Judith A. Sktretny, MA, Vice President, Life Transitions Center, Inc. Location: Hospice Mitchell Campus, 225 Como Park Blvd., Cheektowaga. Free Workshop. 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM. This workshop will give practical tips for handling the people or events that can make life stressful. To register, call Hospice Marketing at 686-8258.

Wednesday, June 12. "Thud and Blunder: The Lesser Known Medical Complications of Warfare." Presenter: Richard Lee, MD. City-Wide Grand Rounds. Sponsored by the SUNY-Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, through the Department of Medicine. Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Hilleboe Auditorium, Research Studies Center, 1st floor. 7:45 AM - 8:45 AM. Approved for 1.0 hours of AMA/PRA Category 1 credit. For further information, contact Mary Wysocki at 898-3941.

Symposium on Ethics and Values in Medicine and the Biomedical Sciences

In conjunction with the SUNY-Buffalo Sesquicentennial celebration, the Center is helping to sponsor a major symposium, to be held from November 14-16.

Thursday, Nov. 14, 1996

Opening (Evening) Reception

Friday, Nov. 15, 1996

Keynote Address (8:30AM)
H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. (Rice University and Baylor University School of Medicine): "Bioethics at the End of the Millennium: Fashioning Health Care Policy in the Absence of a Content-full Moral Vision."

Session One:The Human Genome Project (10:00AM- 12:30PM)

Eric Jeungst (Case Western Reserve University): "The Challenge of Human Genome Research for the Professional Ethics of Medicine."
Dorothy Nelkin (New York University): "Human Genetics and Social Policy: The Public Appropriation of the Gene."
Diane Paul (University of Massachusetts at Boston): "Lessons from the History of PKU Screening."

Lunch (12:30-1:30PM)

Ethics Rounds at Local Hospitals (2:00-4:30PM)

Saturday, Nov. 16, 1996

Session Two:The Dilemma of Funding Health Care: Technology, Resources and Priorities (9AM-11:30AM)

Laurence McCullough (Baylor University School of Medicine): "A Preventative Ethics Approach to the Managed Practice of Medicine."
E. Haavi Morreim (University of Tennessee Medical School): "New Technologies: When to Buy (Into) New Ones, When to Stay with the Old."
H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr.: "Toward Multiple Standards of Health Delivery: Taking Moral and Economic Diversity Seriously."

Lunch (11:30AM-12:30PM)

Session Three: The Physician-Patient Relationship. (12:30-3:00PM)

Kathryn Montgomery Hunter (Northwestern University Medical School): "A Medicine of Neighbors."
Julie Rothstein (Yale University): "Can I Trust You Now? Trust and the Physician-Patient Relationship: Implications for Continuity of Care."
Howard Brody (Michigan State University): "Can Relationships Heal -- Cheap?"

Break (3-3:30PM)

Session Four: Roundtable Discussion (3:30-5PM)

For details on how to register, contact Professor James Bono, Dept. of History, Park Hall, SUNY-Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260; 645-2282, ext. 559; e-mail: hischaos@acsu.buffalo.edu.

Undergraduate Conference on Bioethics

The Teaching Bioethics subcommittee of the Center's Educational Committee is interested in holding a Western New York Undergraduate Conference on Bioethics. Area instructors could present papers and panel discussions and encourage their students to attend. If you would like to help organize this conference, send your suggestions for dates, topics and presenters to Tim Madigan; phone: 636-7571; fax: 636-1733; e- mail: timmadigan@aol.com.

Does the Body Matter?

As part of next fall's 150th anniversary celebration, SUNY-Buffalo is sponsoring a major academic symposium entitled "Does the Body Matter? A UB Sesquicentennial Symposium on Frontiers of Knowledge in Nature, Society and Culture.", on Friday, October 4 at the Slee Concert Hall, North Campus. This will bring together a distinguished group of scholars: Gerald Edelman, Nobel-Prize winning neuroscientist; N. Katherine Hayles, leading cultural critic of changing technologies; Bruno Latour, sociologist of science; Richard Lewontin, biologist- critic of the human genome project; Margaret Locke, anthropologist of non-Western cultures; and a panel of notable SUNY-Buffalo faculty. The symposium will address the ongoing redefinition of the human body in contemporary society. The "Bioethics Bulletin" will have further details in future issues.

Undergraduate Conference on Bioethics

Call for Papers

"Women's Health Issues in Emerging Economies: Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Annual Conference." San Francisco, CA, November 20-21, 1996. This panel at the conference will focus on women's health conditions, legal challenges, and feminist strategies for resolving health-related problems in developing economic regions around the world. Geographic regions include Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, South or Central America, aboriginal communities, and rural or poverty-stricken areas in North America or Australasia. Topics might emphasize traditional women's health topics (reproduction/contraception/abortion access) or might explore more broadly the effects of poverty, governmental restructuring, or regional economic instability as determinants of women's health. Reports of women's contributions to health policy to address such difficulties are also encouraged. Please send a brief biographical sketch, proposal, and contact address by June 30, 1996 to: Laura Shanner
Joint Centre for Bioethics
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
CANADA M5G 1L4
e-mail: laura.shanner@utoronto.ca fax: 416-978-1911

Members Corner

The Members Corner is designed to note research, presentations and published articles and books by Center members. Please send all such information to the newsletter editor so that the Center can keep members informed about the work occurring in this area.

Center co-director Steve Wear's book Informed Consent: Patient Autonomy and Physician Beneficence in Clinical Medicine has received two new reviews in the literature:
Andrew Crowden (Deakin University-Australia) in Bioethics, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1996), pp. 83-86.

Andrew Lustig (Institute of Religion-Texas Medical Center) in Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Vol. 21 (1996), pp. 101-109.

Comments and Suggestions

Your comments and suggestions regarding this newsletter are encouraged. Please send them to the Center address, or by e-mail to the newsletter editor, Tim Madigan - timmadigan@aol.com. We also need information on upcoming events that would be of interest to Center members. The deadline for the next newsletter is June 15th.