Steven Miles is Our Hero

The 2004 Minnesotan of the Year is bioethics scholar Miles, who as a result is the subject of this outstanding profile in Minnesota Monthly by Ann M. Bauer. [thanks Carl Elliott via MCW]

Guest Blogger Dominic Sisti

Welcome to Dominic Sisti, our Guest blogger for the next few months. Those of you with interest in bioethics for high school students know him, and we think he's great.

Here's a biosketch: Dominic A. Sisti is a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, an ethicist at Holy Redeemer Health System in Philadelphia, and an adjunct instructor at Villanova University. Dominic received his master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania (Bioethics, 2000) and his Bachelor of Science degree from Villanova University (Biology, 1996). He serves on several ethics committees and is currently working to develop the Center's High School Bioethics Project (PI- Prof. McGee) (see highschoolbioethics.org). Dominic is a co-editor of Health, Disease, and Illness: Concepts in Medicine (with Profs. Caplan & McCartney, Georgetown University Press, June 2004).

Welcome, Dom!

Ezekiel Emanuel IOM Fellow

...among this year's class of fellows he is the only bioethics/medical humanities person.

A Paraplegic's View on Stem-cell Research

This month it has been a seller's market for bioethics "talks" on stem cell research. Every organization in the nation seems to be inviting ever bioethics scholar in the nation, and more than a few dozen ministers and lobbyists and politicians (including many who cannot spell 'pluripotent') to address group after group on hES and the election. On a weekend that Peter Singer (of Princeton) was protested at University of Vermont - giving the Dewey lectures - for discussing stem cells and disability, it seems important to note the perspective often adopted by several of the disability organizations and many with disabilities: stem cell research debates, and perhaps the research itself, can lead to odd and pernicious views of disability, it is argued. Kelly Hollowell offers one such view in the WorldNet.