Islamic Code of Ethics Includes Therapeutic Cloning

SciDev.Net reports on the new Islamic code of medical ethics up for a vote:

Muslim states are being asked to allow the cloning of human embryos for research into possible medical treatments — so-called therapeutic cloning — while maintaining a ban on the reproductive cloning of human beings. Both provisions are included in the draft text of what is being proposed as the first international Islamic code of medical and health ethics, approved during the eighth conference of the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS), held in Cairo last month. The proposed code addresses the relationships between physicians, their patients, and wider society from the perspectives of both Islam and medical ethics. It takes into account Islamic views on new medical techniques such as in vitro fertilisation and gene therapy.

Dia de la Ética y el Desarrollo en el Bid. Live.

Press Release:

On January 11th, 2005, the Inter-American Initiative on Social Capital, Ethics and Development will do a live webcast of the "Ethics and Development Day" at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). In order to view the presentations by Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate; Enrique V. Iglesias, IDB President; Amitai Etzioni, George Washington Emeritus Professor; Mirta Roses, Pan-American Health Organization General Director; Bernardo Kliksberg, General Coordinator of the Inter-American Initiative on Social Capital, Ethics and Development; Eva Joly, Integrity Award Recipient; among others, you will need to click on the following link on January 11th, 2005 starting 9:30 a.m. (EST): http://www.iadb.org/etica/ingles/webcasts/webcast2-i.cfm

The complete agenda for the event can be found here.

The Ethics of Bioethics

The American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities, and Albany Medical College, of Union University, and Union's Graduate College and Union College are jointly sponsoring this conference that deals with the issue that comes up over and over in this blog: What is the difference between ethical and unethical bioethics? Are bioethicists (whatever that means) supposed to be ethical people, and if so what does that mean? For example, bioethicists support their work with funds from all sorts of sources: universities built with tobacco money, federal grant money and foundation money that is heavily laden with government philosophy, and, yes, from companies, including pharmaceutical companies.

If you believe some critics of bioethics, most notably Carl Elliott of Minnesota, being remotely close to at least one of these sources, big pharma, is an unforgivable sin. If you believe the most aggressive defenders of working with and for companies, it is thickheaded to turn down corporate research in bioethics out of repugnance while you seek a tenured guarantee of a salary (from a health system) funded largely by corporations. And then there is the matter of bioethicists and politics: Howard Dean has a bioethicist, and some (including me) say that the President's Council was used as a political tool in the last election. Bioethicists campaigned for Proposition 71.

Bioethicists have been sniping, arguing, and posturing about these issues, and there has been some real struggle to figure them out.

Finally there will be a big pow-wow - a major conference about bioethics' "big sins," including the worst mistakes made by bioethicists and some of the strategic errors made by bioethics centers. But the big goal for this meeting isn't to identify those mistakes, but to avoid new ones - it is maybe the most important issue in bioethics' recent history. The conference will attract a whole lot of scrutiny by the media and by bioethics' critics - will be setting standards for ethical conduct by bioethicists. There will be fireworks and there will be good intentions, and with any luck there will be progress. Save the dates: April 7-9. If you want to speak, there is an [PDF] invitation to you to make a 250 word proposal. Hope to see you in the NY capital in the spring! - gm (soon to be of AMC myself)

Bioethics in Philadelphia? Let's Cover Australia Instead!

There hasn't been a single major media story about the major presentations at the annual meetings of the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities in Philadelphia just before the election. The media missed a session in which members of the CDC panel on vaccines discussed strategy. They missed the major session on Leon Kass. They missed major sessions on neuroenhancement. The ASBH conference was in Philadelphia, where many mass media are either based or can uplink, or can get to by train in 45 minutes. Actually, the point doesn't really require argumentation; you won't find anybody in bioethics who doubts that media can and do get to Philadelphia every week. Just not to the ASBH, just days before an election that hung in large part on social issues like abortion and stem cells.

But the media is in Australia. There, at the World Congress of Bioethics, even single papers like this one on face transplantation, and this one on deafness genetic testing are getting major coverage. The EU draft consensus document on stem cell research finalized by John Harris received coverage around the world. Yes these are important documents and it is good that the world is covering these meetings, sponsored by the International Association of Bioethics. Where were the media a couple of weeks ago? Sydney beats the heck out of Philadelphia, granted, but somebody at ASBH must be scratching his head ... or perhaps the winds have begun to fade IAB as the primary public bioethics group?

Virginia Tech: "A Number": A Play about Human Cloning

A new play by Caryl Churchill that "dramatizes our anxieties about our individuality and identity that are stirred up by the looming possibility of cloning" will be premiered at a VT conference about human cloning on 10/28.