Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care

Bioethics Bulletin

February, 1998
Volume Five, Number Two

Co-Directors: Gerald Logue, MD and Stephen Wear, PhD
Associate Director: Jack Freer, MD
Research Associate: Adrianne McEvoy
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/
Send E-mail to: wear@acsu.buffalo.edu.

Newsletter Distribution

This newsletter can be delivered to you via e-mail or fax or over the internet (forward your request to: Jack Freer, MD at: jfreer@buffalo.edu). If you prefer fax, call 862-3412 and leave your fax number. We encourage and appreciate the use of e-mail and fax distribution rather than paper for the newsletter.

Center Listservers

The Center now maintains two automated e-mail listservers. BIOETH-LIST is primarily designed for those in the Greater Buffalo area and permits subscribers to post to the list. This list is available for posting local announcements, as well as a medium for discussion of relevant topics. It will also distribute the Center newsletter, "Bioethics Bulletin." If you are on this list, you can send a message to the entire list by addressing the message to: BIOETH-LIST@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu. Archives of old BIOETH-LIST messages are maintained at: http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/bioeth-list.html

BIOBUL-LIST is strictly used for distribution of "Bioethics Bulletin" and is mainly for those outside of Western New York. If you have further questions about this service, contact Jack Freer at 887-4852 or at: jfreer@buffalo.edu.

Upcoming Center Meetings

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

Community Affairs

Wednesday, February 25. "The Top 10 Needs of Dying Patients": a presentation by Judith Skretny, MA, Director, Life Transition Center. Sponsored by Kenmore Mercy Hospital Ethics Committee. 8:00 AM-9:00 AM: Presentation and Discussion. Kenmore Mercy Hospital Community Conference Room.

Reading Group

The Center’s Reading Group has chosen to focus on the book The Healer’s Power by Howard Brody, MD. [ The Healer’s Power is available through Amazon.Com.] There will be two meetings in February. Jack Freer, MD, associate director of the Center, will lead a discussion on chapters 8-9, on Monday, February 2 at 4:00 PM. On Monday, February 23 at 4:00 PM, Ron Smith will lead a discussion of chapters 10-11. The meetings are held at the Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Road, between Maple and Rensch Roads in Amherst. Meetings are open to all interested parties. To receive copies of the reading material, or for further information, contact Adrianne McEvoy at 862-3412.

Upcoming Lectures

Friday, March 6. "Does Kant’s Moral Theory Include an ‘Ethics of Care’?" A talk by Herlinde Pauer-Studer, sponsored by the SUNY-Buffalo Philosophy Department. 4:00 PM. 280 Park Hall, SUNY-Buffalo Amherst Campus. For details, call Eva Koepsell at 645-2444, ext. 781.

Thursday, March 19. "The Happiness of Pigs: Mill’s Ethics Reconsidered." A talk by Rudolf Luthe, sponsored by the SUNY-Buffalo Philosophy Department. 4:00 PM. 280 Park Hall, SUNY-Buffalo Amherst Campus. For details, call Eva Koepsell at 645-2444, ext. 781.

Friday, March 20. "The Truth is Out There: Abduction Hysteria and Conspiracy Theory at the End of Time." A talk by Mark Kingwell, professor of philosophy, University of Toronto. Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Road, 8:00 PM. As 1000 A.D. drew near, society buzzed with bizarre ideas about the end of the world - or so generations of history students were taught. Does "millennium fever' help explain the popularity of today’s wild UFO abduction and conspiracy claims? Kingwell interprets "The X Files" to explore some of the parallels between our culture and previous periods of millennial expectation.

Spring Clinical Day

The Center for Hospice and Palliative Care will be holding its annual Spring Clinical Day on Friday, February 6, from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The location is the Hospice Mitchell Campus in the Education Center, 225 Como Park Boulevard, Cheektowaga. Registration is $20.00 and is due no later than February 2. Reservations can be made by calling the Life Transitions Center at 836-6460.

Course on Bioethics

The readers of "Bioethics Bulletin" are invited to attend a course on "Social and Ethical Values in Medicine", led by Center Co-Director Stephen Wear, PhD and Research Associate Adrianne McEvoy. The course meets every Wednesday from 4:00 - 6:30 PM in Knox Hall, Room 20, SUNY-Buffalo Amherst Campus. The following talks will be held in the month of February:

February 4: Liz Clark, Esq. will be lecturing on legal and ethical issues regarding patient confidentiality.

February 11: Susan Regan, Esq. and Benjamin Phillips, RN, PhD, will address the issues of "competency and the capacity to make decisions."

February 18: David Nyberg, PhD, will discuss truth telling.

New Educational Initiative

A major educational initiative is being developed within the SUNY-Buffalo Department of Medicine, in the form of didactic presentations to its residents. Eight core topics will be presented to all Program A residents within the format of morning report at the three main teaching hospitals (BGH/ECMC/VAMC) over a two-year span. The eight topics are: informed consent and communication with patients; competence and the capacity to consent to treatment/other decision makers; confidentiality; conflicts of interest; legal guidelines regarding death and dying; advance directives; palliative and hospice care; disputes between physicians and patients and/or families. Center Co-Directors Gerald Logue and Stephen Wear were charged with developing this module by Dr. Robert Klocke, Chair of the Department of Medicine. They have been joined in this effort by Center members: Eric Ten Brock, Elizabeth Clark, Jack Freer, Susan Gallagher, Jan Harszlak, Tom Kufel, Robert Milch, David Nyberg, Susan Regan, John Ryan, Robert Scheig, Susan Schwartz, and Monica Spaulding.

Canadian Bioethics Society

The 10th Annual Canadian Bioethics Society Annual Meeting will be held in Toronto on October 15-18, 1998. The conference is hosted by the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. Confirmed plenary speakers include James Childress, John Lantos, Robert Levine, Laura Purdy, and Judith Wilson Ross. A call for workshops and abstracts will be issued soon. For further details, contact Peter A. Singer, MD, MPH, FRCPC, Sun Life Chair in Bioethics and Director, University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics; phone: 1-416-978-4756; fax: 416-978-1911; e-mail: peter.singer@utoronto.ca.

Society for Health and Human Values Regional Meeting

The Society for Health and Human Values announces its Spring Regional Meeting, April 17-19, 1998, at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio. The theme of the meeting is: "Whose Ethics? Which Medicine?: The Tacit and Explicit Development of a Medical Ethics", sponsored by the Dr. James Dale Ethics Center at Youngstown State University. Medical ethics has come of age as an area of scholarship and research. Its scholars and researchers have made substantial contributions to public policy and to the public awareness of problems in the clinic and the laboratory. But all of this activity has posed new questions for practioners of these arts. This conference will provide a forum to examine the ways in which different approaches to bioethics determine our conception of medicine and its ethical issues, and it will consider the origins of medical ethics and knowledge of medicine. Speakers include Charles Bosk, Howard Brody, Tod Chambers, Larry Churchill, Richard B. Miller, Christine Mitchell, Rosa Lynn Pinkus, and Rosemary Tong. For information, contact: Jody Chicester, Center for Medical Ethics, 3708 Fifth Avenue, Suite 300, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

Intensive Bioethics Seminar

The Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D. C. is offering an Intensive Bioethics Course, from June 6-11. Standard tuition is $1350, which includes course materials, breakfast and lunch, receptions and evening banquet, but not other dinners or lodging. The tuition fee is due by June 1, 1998. For details, call 1-202-687-5477.

Call for Papers

The Fifth Biennial Conference on Psychiatric, Psychosocial and Ethical Issues in Organ Transplantation, which will be held October 2-4 at the Marriott Key Center in Cleveland, Ohio, is accepting abstracts for presentation. The conference will be multidisciplinary, with psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, ethicists, and transplant physicians. Abstracts must be submitted no later than March 15. For details, contact Margaret Kotz, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195.

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.

The issue of cloning human beings was much in the news in the past month. Center Co-Director Stephen Wear contributed to a number of discussions on the topic, including being invited to address the issue on Sandy Beach’s afternoon radio show and Dr. Jim Kelly’s television program "Pulse." He will also be on the Judge Penny Wolfgang Show sometime in February.

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 February 15th.