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April 2017 EACME Newsletter
Contents
Dear EACME colleagues and friends,
Recent media coverage of biomedical engineers who have designed a synthetic yeast genome, resequencing the yeast DNA in the process to eliminate redundancy and reduce its size, has briefly brought to public attention a gamut of issues about the preparedness of scientific regulators for the pace of scientific advances. Such concerns are familiar to medical ethics, but any disquiet about the appropriateness of altering the DNA of living organisms for purely cosmetic reasons may well be submerged by apparently more pressing anxieties. Europe is in the midst of bruising political upheavals that bring their own challenges. These are of course close to my mind as a U.K. scholar, since on the day I write this editorial BREXIT has been formally applied for by the British government. As scholars and clinicians within EACME we naturally see both the scientific and the political as within our ambit. The potential costs to human health of economic and civil upheaval are enormous; the great toll that austerity has imposed (and continues to impose) on the health of the people of Europe is already well established. One might well ask who should be concerned if such things are not the concern of bioethicists.
With so much to worry about it would seem our work is cut out for us. While, here in at the Centre for Ethics in Medicine in Bristol, we have no plans for EAC-XIT, it is nevertheless heartening to include in this newsletter reports from two new members of our network in this issue; the Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine at the University Medicine Greifswald and the School of Bioethics at Pontificio Ateneo Regina Apostolorum. It would be grandiose to suggest our expanding network is anything more than a glimmer of hope in what can sometimes appear to be dark times. Yet spaces such as EACME, where individuals with diverse national, professional and personal backgrounds can exchange ideas in a spirit of openness and collegiality are important in times like these. I am hopeful, then, that such small signs mean we shall continue to build bridges, rather than burn them.
Dr Giles Birchley
Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol, U.K.
Download the full April 2017 EACME Newsletter
Editorial G. Birchley
International conference for young scholars 15 – 19 February 2016 in Bochum Germany L. van Melle and H. Edelbroek
EACME prize winner 2016 Marcello Ienca M. Ienca
The Postgraduate Bioethics Conference 2016 report G. Morley and L. Austin
2017 Annual Postgraduate bioethics conference Oxford, 4-5th September R. Baxi and K. Sahan
End of Life Care Symposium Y. Isil Ulman
Project Announcement “Sterbewelten“ L. Kaelin
New full members
Thesis Abstract M. de Boer
Adolescents: Capacité de discernement et/vs autorité de décider J. Martin
Book reviews G. Birchley, J. Martin
Why I wrote ‘Empirical bioethics: practical and theoretical perspectives’ J. Ives
Editorial Board
Editorial
Dear EACME colleagues and friends,
Recent media coverage of biomedical engineers who have designed a synthetic yeast genome, resequencing the yeast DNA in the process to eliminate redundancy and reduce its size, has briefly brought to public attention a gamut of issues about the preparedness of scientific regulators for the pace of scientific advances. Such concerns are familiar to medical ethics, but any disquiet about the appropriateness of altering the DNA of living organisms for purely cosmetic reasons may well be submerged by apparently more pressing anxieties. Europe is in the midst of bruising political upheavals that bring their own challenges. These are of course close to my mind as a U.K. scholar, since on the day I write this editorial BREXIT has been formally applied for by the British government. As scholars and clinicians within EACME we naturally see both the scientific and the political as within our ambit. The potential costs to human health of economic and civil upheaval are enormous; the great toll that austerity has imposed (and continues to impose) on the health of the people of Europe is already well established. One might well ask who should be concerned if such things are not the concern of bioethicists.
With so much to worry about it would seem our work is cut out for us. While, here in at the Centre for Ethics in Medicine in Bristol, we have no plans for EAC-XIT, it is nevertheless heartening to include in this newsletter reports from two new members of our network in this issue; the Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine at the University Medicine Greifswald and the School of Bioethics at Pontificio Ateneo Regina Apostolorum. It would be grandiose to suggest our expanding network is anything more than a glimmer of hope in what can sometimes appear to be dark times. Yet spaces such as EACME, where individuals with diverse national, professional and personal backgrounds can exchange ideas in a spirit of openness and collegiality are important in times like these. I am hopeful, then, that such small signs mean we shall continue to build bridges, rather than burn them.
Dr Giles Birchley
Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol, U.K.
Download the full April 2017 EACME Newsletter
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