www.rso.cornell.edu/bsc/
ethics@cornell.edu
In the wake of modern research and medicine, ethics are too often considered after-the-fact niceties. The Bioethics Society of Cornell (BSC) was established to engage the field of bioethics in an organized and discussion-based approach to help integrate moral deliberation into the undergraduate curriculum.
The BSC meets every week to discuss current events in medical ethics, research ethics, and ethics and policy. We usually meet at 4:45pm on Mondays in 119 Stimson Hall, however, the location is subject to change. Meetings are open to everyone.
The Bioethics Society of Cornell is also the parent organization of the Ivy Journal of Ethics. The Journal is a nationwide bioethics journal featuring pieces from undergrads from all across the country. If you would like to contribute to the Journal please email us. The Journal is published on a semesterly basis. The deadlines for the Journals are tentatively around the beginning of November for the Spring issue, and the middle of April for the Fall issue. Feel free to check out past issues of the Journal online. Print subscriptions are available at cost.
The Bioethics Society of Cornell also sponsors speakers and events on campus. In spring '05 the BSC co-sponsored two events on campus which will brought the likes of Norma McCorvey and Cathy Cleaver. In fall 2005, the BSC was honored to have Prof. William Provine come and discuss Intelligent Design and evolution in context of free will, and was further blessed by Prof. David Feldshuh's discussion on his Emmy Award winning play, Ms. Ever's Boys.
If you are interested in co-sponsoring a future event with us please send us an email.
If you would like more information, send us an email by following the link on the left. If you would like to join the BSC-l listserve, follow these instructions.
Bioethics Society of Cornell Officers, 2006 - 2007
Rev. Rob S. Smith - Advisor
Dan Wasser, '08 - President
Sonja DeVaul, '07 - VP
Ugo Ihekweazu, '08 - Ivy Journal of Ethics Editor in Chief
Jaclyn Shaw, '08 - Director of Publicity
Julie Maier, '07 - Co-Director of Recruitment
Matt Galati, '09 - Co-Director of Recruitment
Chris Torre, '08 - Co-Director of Recruitment
Gene Weinstein, '07 - Treasurer
Kevin Kumar, '09 - Secretary
The BSC is non-partisan, independent registered student organization, and its views and positions do not necessarily reflect those of Cornell University or any other University affiliate. The BSC is funded by the Student Activities Finance Commission. The Ivy Journal of Ethics is free to all Cornell students and departments. Copies may be found floating around campus or may be requested for pick-up.
**BSC Press Coverage and Past Events**
Moody-Adams Tackles Ethics | Cornell Daily Sun
January 31st, 2006 | By Christine Ryu
"The Bioethics Society of Cornell began their newest series of lectures yesterday with a talk by Prof. Michele Moody-Adams, philosophy, the vice provost of undergraduate education. Her lecture, titled "What Cultural Diversity Really Means For Bioethics," took place in the Carol Tatkon Center and was attended by members of the Bioethics Society as well as the Cornell community.
Moody-Adams opened her lecture asking "what [it means] to take culture seriously." She reviewed some of today's prominent bioethics issues - contraception, health care, genetics and gene therapy, and experimentation on human subjects - as they relate to cultural differences.
Moody-Adams, also director and Hutchinson Professor of the Ethics and Public Life Program, emphasized the need for "a conception of culture that captures what we care about," positing that all humans hold "a common morality" but are incapable of articulating it. [...]"
Read full article here.
October 17th, 2005: Prof. Gary Walford, Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Laboratory at St. Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse. Dr. Walford is a practicing cardiologist subspecializing in coronary angioplasty, and presently one of 17 members of the Governor's Cardiac Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations to the Department of Health of New York State regarding cardiac health policy issue.
"Does Public Release of Hospital Mortality Data Influence the Care of the Sickest Patients? The Effect of Government Oversight on the Ethics of Medical Decision-Making."
"The public release of outcomes- particularly death related to certain operations and procedures- is often called "scorecard medicine" and is seen as a method to improve the quality of medical care through fostering both accountability by providers and awareness by consumers. The emergence of
government ( the New York State Department of Health) as the arbiter of these statistics has given them credibilty and clout. Hospitals and physicians know that their reputation, and even their ability to continue to perform these operations and procedures, may depend on the results of these statistics. Recently, several studies have raised the concern that these publicly released statistics have led to an ethical conflict in which hospitals and physicians may be making medical decisions which avoid the performance of these operations and procedures on the sickest of patients. These are the patients most likely to die even if they receive high quality care and thus will make a hospital's or physician's mortality statistics look worse. But they are also the patients who are most likely to benefit from the operation or procedure.
Our discussion will explore the interaction of the ethical principles involved in this conflict and the agents of these principles: beneficience and the physician; autonomy and the patient; and justice and the government."
C.U. Bioethics Society Tackles Tough Issues | Cornell Daily Sun
October 06, 2005 | By Scott Rosenthal,
Sun Contributor
It’s hard to find an organization on any college campus that is dedicated equally to discussing biology, medicine, cybernetics, politics, law, philosophy and theology on a weekly basis. But the Bioethics Society, an undergraduate club that also sponsors lectures and publishes a bi-annual journal, has been growing since its creation five years ago. Bioethics, originally started as a “cottage industry” during the technology boom of the 1990s, is quickly establishing itself both within academia and popular culture — and Cornell students have picked up on its appeal.
The Tuskegee study, a U.S. government-sponsored experiment on poor black men who were denied treatment for syphilis that took place between the 1930s and the 1970s, was the discussion topic of the club’s meeting on Monday. Advised by Father Robert Smith, a Cornell United Religious Work Catholic chaplain, the debate centered on whether it is right to use data from an experiment that was conducted in a “morally repugnant manner.”
M
att Wong ’06, president of the club, led the discussion. He asked the group to give their opinion on whether the data from the Tuskegee study, or a similar situation, could be used as research material for others or cited in support of other scientific findings. [...]
Read the full article here.
Race, creationism, stem cells: Cornell Bioethics Society tackles tough ethical issues every week | Cornell News Services
September 21, 2005 | By Krishna Ramanujan, Cornell News Service
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Syphilis. Race. Treating patients as objects. These charged issues are at the center of an award-winning play, "Miss Evers' Boys," by David Feldshuh, a physician and Cornell University theater professor. The themes were also apt subjects for Feldshuh's talk Sept. 19 at a weekly meeting of the Bioethics Society of Cornell.
Professor David Feldshuh speaks at the Sept. 19 meeting of the Bioethics Society of Cornell.
Feldshuh, who also serves as artistic director of Cornell's Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, discussed his Emmy award-winning, Pulitzer prize-nominated play, which explores moral issues related to a 40-year U.S. government syphilis study in Tuskegee, Ala., that left poor black syphilis patients untreated so that doctors could view a natural history of the disease and see whether whites and blacks responded differently. Between 1932 and 1972, the 600 subjects complied because they were falsely told they were being treated. [...]
Read the full article here.
Prof Denies Human Free Will | Cornell Daily Sun
August 30, 2005 | By Julie Geng, Sun Senior Writer
"Resistence is futile. Prof. William Provine, ecology and evolutionary biology, argues against intelligent design and human free will yesterday before an audience of about sixty.
In the midst of a heated national debate about intelligent design and evolution, Prof. William Provine, ecology and evolutionary biology, tackled the question head-on in a discussion attended by over 60 students, faculty and Ithacan community members last night. Sponsored by the Bioethics Society of Cornell, the lecture, titled “Evolution and Intelligent Design: The Implications for Human Free Will” covered topics including Darwinism, the origin of moral responsibility, the social need to assign blame and reductionism. “I was a vocal opponent to I.D. [intelligent design] even before [the movement] began,” Provine said at the opening.
One of the most fascinating views of I.D. supporters, Provine said, was that the only differences between humans and chimpanzees were “human free will and immortal souls. [...] "
Read the full article here.
Roe v. Wade's Roe Speaks at Cornell | Cornell Daily Sun
April 22, 2005 |
By Rebecca Shoval, Sun Staff Writer
Norma McCorvey, better known as Jane Roe, spoke last night in Statler Auditorium about her conversion from pro-choice activist to pro-life activist. She was the plaintiff in the landmark Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide in the 1970s.
Paul Ibrahim '06, president of the Cornell Coalition for Life, introduced McCorvey and gave a brief history of her life. After protecting her identity with the pseudonym Jane Roe until the 1980s, McCorvey published the 1994 book entitled I Am Roe: Roe v. Wade and Freedom of Choice. She was a pro-choice activist and worker at an abortion clinic until 1995, when she converted to Catholicism.
She has since started an anti-abortion organization called "Roe No More" and written a second book called Won By Love.
McCorvey opened her speech by thanking Ibrahim and talking about how she came to speak at Cornell, saying she agreed "to share my testimony, not to debate." [...]
Read the full article here.