Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care

Bioethics Bulletin

March, 1998
Volume Five, Number Three

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.

Reading Group

The Center’s Reading Group has chosen to focus on the book The Healer’s Power by Howard Brody, MD. PhD. [ The Healer’s Power is available through Amazon.Com.] On Monday, March 9 at 4:00 PM, Ron Smith will lead a discussion of chapters 10-11. On Monday, March 31 Larry Torcello and Paul Johnson will discuss chapters 12-13. 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.

Wednesday, March 25. The Philippa Harris Lecture on Bioethical Issues in Cancer will be held at 5:00 PM at the Ontario Cancer Institute/Princess Margaret Hospital. The lecture will take place in the auditorium (610 University Avenue, 6th Floor). Kathleen Foley, Chief of Pain and Palliative Care Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York and Project Director, Project on Death in America, will be speaking on "Transforming the Culture of Death." For more information, contact Margot Smith; phone 416--978-0871; fax: 416-978-1911; e-mail: margot.smith@utoronto.ca.

Monday, April 6. The Fourth Annual University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics Jus Lecture, in honor of Dr. Andzej Jus, will be held from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM at the Toronto Hospital (General Division). The lecture will take place in Banting Hall (101 College Street, NU-G-113). Dr. Floyd E. Bloom, Chair, Department of Neuropharmacology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, and Editor-in-Chief, Science, will be presenting on "Basically Honest is Not Good Enough in Science." For more information, contact Margot Smith; phone 416--978-0871; fax: 416-978-1911; e-mail: margot.smith@utoronto.ca.

Tuesday, April 14. "Creation vs. Evolution - the Debate Widens." Speaker: Eugenie C. Scott, executive director, National Council for Science Education. 8:00 PM. Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Road. Dr. Scott, who recently appeared on a "Firing Line" debate on the topic "Should Evolutionists Acknowledge Special Creation?" will discuss the ongoing controversy over the teaching of evolution in high schools throughout the United States. For further information, contact Tim Madigan at 636-7571.

Thursday, April 23-Friday, April 24. "The Human Genome Project: Science, Law, and Social Change in the 21st Century." Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts. For a meeting brochure, call, write or e- mail: Gus Cervini, Office of Public Affairs, Whitehead Institute, 9 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142; 617-258-0633;cervini@wi.mit.edu.

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 March and April:

March 25: Jack Freer, MD, will provide a general introduction to death and dying with correlations to New York State law.

April 1: Janet Kaye, J.D., of Buffalo State College will discuss "death and dying in America" from a legal/journalistic/personal perspective; Gerald Logue, MD will comment.

April 8: Paul Johnson, PhD of D'Youville College, will present and comment on a film about physician-assisted suicide, and Adrianne McEvoy will offer a review of the affirmative action position regarding such a practice.

New Education Initiative

A major educational initiative has been developed within the SUNY-Buffalo Department of Medicine, in the form of didactic presentations to residents. Eight core topics will be presented to all residents within the format ofmorning reports at the three main teaching hospitals (BGH/ECMC/VAMC) over a two-year span. The eight topics are: competence and 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 Loge and Stephen Wear have been 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. Interested parties are invited to attend the first three modules, all on informed consent and communication, at/on:

Tuesday, March 3, 8:15 AM VA Medical Center, Room 803C

Thursday, March 12, 11:30 AM ECMC, room by board room on third floor Friday, March 13, 10:15 AM BGH in Department of Medicine morning report conference room on 7th floor

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.

Bioethics Course Offered

The Midwest Intensive Bioethics Course 1998 will be held July 13-18 at Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago. This year's theme is "Method in Bioethics: Philosophy, Law, Narrative." Case discussion, history, literature, and film will be used to illuminate basic ethical problems in health-care delivery. Tuition is $700.00. A limited number of partial tuition scholarships are available. Students may attend for $250.00. Several kinds of lodging are available. For information, contact Kristen Tym, Medical College of Wisconsin; phone: 414-456-4299; fax: 414-456-6511; e-mail: ktym@mcw.edu.

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.

Stephen Wear, William Coles, Anthony Szczygiel, Adrianne McEvoy, and Carl Pegels: "Patenting Surgical Techniques: A Legal-Ethical Analysis"; Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (March 1998).

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 March 15th.