Panels, workshops, discussions and a Bioethics Bowl are among the activities to be featured on campus Friday and Saturday as part of the 11th annual National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference (NUBC).
Planned and organized by students, NUBC covers issues of current interest in the field of bioethics with discussions led by experts from across the country.
This year’s theme, “The Human Use of Human Beings in Medicine and Science,” reflects the ideal of "medical humanities" encompassed in the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) name by embracing art, drama, literature, films and the media, as well as the humanities and the social and natural sciences.
“This is a celebration of undergraduate research and an opportunity to introduce a new generation of students to the field of bioethics,” said Robert Baker, chair of the Rapaport Ethics Across the Curriculum Initiative and the William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy. He also directs the Union Graduate College-Mount Sinai School Medicine Bioethics Program.
Tod Chambers, president of ASBH and author of “Narrative Bioethics and Prozac as a Way of Life,” will open the conference with a talk on “Witches, Punks and Bioethicists.”
Susan Lederer, chair of the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and author of “Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature,” will discuss “The Myth and Metaphor of Frankenstein.”
Other speakers include award-winning journalist Harriet Washington, author of “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.”
The Bioethics Bowl will draw teams from Dartmouth, the National Hispanic University, University of Miami and other schools for formal debates.
Union is the first liberal arts college chosen by ASBH to host the conference. Previous hosts included Princeton University, the University of Virginia, University of Notre Dame, Emory University, Boston University, Texas A&M, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University.
For more information, go to http://ethics.union.edu/nubc.html