Bioethics Bulletin

Editor: Tim Madigan
July 1995
Volume Two, Number Seven

The Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care

Co-Directors: Gerald Logue, MD and Stephen Wear, PhD
Secretary: Lisa Bolten Address:
The Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care
VAMC
3495 Bailey Avenue
Buffalo, New York 14215

Telephone: 862-3412
FAX: 862-4748

E-mail sent to Lisa Bolten LBolten@ubmedc.buffalo.edu.
Please note that the Center address has been changed, along with its phone and fax numbers: this signals the recent move of the Center to a new suite of offices at the VAMC.

Center Research Assistant

Charles Jack, a graduate student in the University at Buffalo's Department of Philosophy, has joined the Center for the summer as a research assistant.

Center Library

The Center is starting a research library, and would appreciate donations of books, articles and journals pertaining to biomedical ethics. These will all be made available for visitors to the Center. Our thanks to Tony Szczygiel for his recent contribution to this collection.

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 JFreer@ubmedb.buffalo.edu. If you would like to receive it by fax, call Lisa Bolten at the telephone number above and tell her your fax number. We encourage the use of e-mail and fax distribution rather than paper for the newsletter.

We would like to thank Jon Jiras and Tom Genoni for their help in putting out the previous Center newsletters.

Upcoming Meetings

Health Care Policy Committee Meeting

The next meeting of the committee will be on Tuesday, July 25 from 8:00 - 9:00 AM at the VA Hospital, room 1104-1 on the 11th floor.

Community Affairs Committee Meeting

The next meeting is scheduled for July 5 from 4:00 - 5:00 PM, in the Erie Community Medical Center board room (third floor). Anyone interested in joining the committee is welcome to attend.

Upcoming Lectures

"How Much of Myself Do I Bring to My Work?" Friday, July 21, 9:00 - 10:00 AM. Presenter: Diane Terranova, BSW. HIV Psycho-Social Grand Rounds - Sponsored by the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, through the Immunodeficiency Services and Life Transitions Center, an affiliate of Hospice of Buffalo, Inc. Held at the Erie Community Medical Center, Smith Auditorium (3rd floor). This program has been approved for 1.0 hours of AMA/PRA Category 1 credit. For further information, contact Lori Berds at 898-4119.

The Center for Literature, Medicine, and the Health Care Professions, a collaborative project of Hiram College and Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, present the Fourth Annual Seminar in Narrative Bioethics, July 29-August 5 at Hiram College, Hiram, Ohio. The seminar offers an in-depth consideration of the links between narrative and bioethics in an open-ended fashion. It focuses on story - myths, fables, parables, novels, poems, plays, biographies, medical cases - as starting points for moral interpretation in the bioethical field. For information, contact the Center for Literature, Medicine, and the Health Care Professions, Hiram College, Hiram, OH 44234; phone: 216-569-5380; fax: 216-569-5449.

"Staying Calm During the Storm." Friday, August 18, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM. Presenter: Linda Koch, CSW. HIV Psycho-Social Grand Rounds - Sponsored by the Immunodeficiency Services and Life Transitions Center, an affiliate of Hospice of Buffalo, Inc. Held at Erie Community Medical Center, Smith Auditorium (3rd floor). For further information, contact Lori Berds at 898-4119.

Bioethics Workshop, at Medina Memorial Hospital, 200 Ohio Street, Medina, New York. Thursday, September 7. Presenters: Drs. Jane Greenlaw and Jeffrey Spike, University of Rochester. Topics include: withdrawing treatment; nutrition and hydration; medical decisions for minors; decisions by surrogate. For further information, contact Margo Kargbo at 798-2000.

Society for Bioethics Consultation Ninth Annual Meeting. September 14- 17, Stouffer Hotel, Cleveland, Ohio. For information, write to Society for Bioethics Consultation, Clinical Ethics Program, Dept. of Medicine, University Hospitals of Cleveland, 11100 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-6033. Or contact the SBC President, Stuart Youngner, MD, at 216- 844-3429; sxy2@po.cwru.edu. This meeting is strongly recommended by Center members who have attended in the past.

Psychiatry Ethics Working Group

The University at Buffalo Department of Psychiatry will be forming a working group to address questions of clinical ethics in the department and to establish a liaison between the Department and the Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care. The working group is being organized by Dr. Ellen Dickinson. Those interested in participating should contact Dr. Jack Freer (887-4852) JFreer@ubmedb.buffalo.edu who will pass on the information to Dr. Dickinson. There will be further details on this group in future newsletters.

Fall 1996 Sesquicentennial Conference

As the School of Medicine and Biological Sciences at the University at Buffalo seeks to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding in 1996, two major academic activities are being planned that directly complement the concerns of the Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care. On May 9-12, 1996, the American Association for the History of Medicine will hold its annual meeting at the Hyatt Hotel in Buffalo, hosted by the University at Buffalo School of Medicine. Just as the AAHM meeting fittingly commemorates UB's contribution to medicine during the last 150 years, the Sesquicentennial Symposium on Ethics and Values in Medicine and the Biomedical Sciences, to be held on November 14-16, 1996 will highlight the link between Buffalo's past and the present and the future state of medicine. Focusing on the theme of "Frontiers of Medicine and Society," the symposium will explore several key issues that will help to shape medical care and research in the twenty-first century. Themes and topics to be explored include: The Human Genome Project; The Dilemma of Funding Health Care: Technology, Resources and Priorities; and the Physician-Patient Relationship. Keynote speaker: H. Tristram Engelhardt, MD, PhD, Rice University and Baylor University. Other speakers include: Eric Jungst, PhD, Case Western Reserve University; Dorothy Nelkin, New York University; Diane Paul, PhD, University of Massachusetts; Haavi Morreim, PhD, University of Tennessee; Julie Rothstein, MD, Yale University; Howard Brody, MD, PhD, Michigan State University; and Kathryn Montgomery Hunter, PhD, Northwestern University. Further details on the two conferences will be given in upcoming Center newsletters.

Call for Papers

American Association for the History of Medicine, 1996 Annual Meeting. May 9-12, at the Hyatt Hotel, Buffalo. The Chair of the Program is James T. H. Connor, Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine, 14 Prince Arthur Avenue, Suite 101, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5R 1A9. Any person interested in presenting a paper at this meeting is invited to submit an abstract (one original and six copies) to Dr. Connor. Any subject in the history of medicine is suitable for presentation, but the paper must represent original work not already published or in press. Submissions on comparative aspects of the history of medicine (by period, region, country, or by culture) are especially welcome. Presentations are limited to twenty minutes. Because the Bulletin of the History of Medicine is the official journal of the AAHM, the Association encourages speakers to make their manuscripts available for consideration by the Bulletin upon request. Abstracts must be typed, single-spaced on one sheet of paper, and must not exceed 300-350 words in length. Abstracts should embody not merely a statement of a research question, but findings and conclusions sufficient to allow assessment by the committee. The following biographical information is also required: Name, title (occupation), preferred mailing address, work and home telephone numbers, and fax numbers, e-mail address, present institutional affiliation and academic degrees. Abstracts must be received by October 15, 1995. Please note that abstracts submitted by e-mail or fax will not be accepted. As in the past, the 1996 program will include lunch-time roundtable workshops and may include poster sessions. Those wishing to submit abstracts for these sessions should follow the instructions given above.

Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario will host two conferences on ethics and the economy, from October 24-26, 1996 and in October, 1997. Both conferences are designed to foster dialogue and ongoing linkages between academics and practitioners. They will stress interaction between academic researchers in the field of ethics and practitioners in three main sectors of the economy: business, health and education. Each conference will include one satellite session and one session on the internet. The organizing committee invites proposals for papers, workshops, seminars and panel discussions. Please send 3 copies of a one page proposal, clearly defining the objectives, points to be covered, presentation format, required A/V support as well as a short biographical note, to: Dr. Leo Groarke, Dept. of Philosophy, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3C5. Proposals should be received by July 15, 1995. For further details, contact Leo Groarke lgroarke@machl.wlul.ca.

Center On-Line

In order to access the Center's on-line services, it is necessary to have a computer account which allows for use of the internet gopher or world wide web (Mosaic, Netscape, etc.). All Center members are deligible for HUBNET (Hospital and UB Network) accounts, but may already have gopher service through other accounts (e.g. ACSU Unix, VAX, IBM). Also, the Buffalo Free-Net has gopher/WWW services. The Center gopher is on the UB Medical School menu (gopher.med.buffalo.edu) and the URL for the Center home page is: The type of gopher or WWW interface varies widely with the system you use. It is probably easier for interested parties to contact Jack Freer directly for instructions if problems arise (he welcomes ALL questions). His e-mail address is JFreer@umedb.buffalo.edu and phone is 887-4852.

Center Members

Tim Madigan, newsletter editor and a member of the Center's executive committee, delivered a talk entitled "Humanism and Human Malleability: Confronting the Ethical Dilemmas of Human Genetic Engineering," at the First International Multidisciplinary Conference on Human Behavior and the Meaning of Modern Humanism, June 15, in Delphi, Greece. The conference, sponsored by the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Greek Institute of Biological Research and Biotechnology of the National Research Foundation, was organized by Dennis V. Razis, MD, an oncologist who spent several years at Buffalo's Roswell Park Clinic in the 1950s. Madigan, a graduate student in the University at Buffalo's Department of Philosophy, gave a similar talk at a conference at the Ateneo in Madrid, Spain, on April 21.

Recent Publications by Center Members

Anthony Szczygiel, "Beyond Informed Consent," Ohio Northern University Law Review, vol. 21, pp. 171-262.

Wear, S.E. and Logue, G.: "The Problem of Medical Futility: Falling Back on a Preventative Ethics Approach", Journal of Clinical Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1995), pp. 135-145.

The Center is collecting publications from its members, to have on file. If you have published an article or book dealing with medical ethics in the past five years, please send a copy to the Center.

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 July 15th.