Volume 1, Issue 3
The annual Bioethics Faculty Retreat will be held on January 4 and 5, 2000 in the Scheman Building at the Iowa State Center. Faculty members who wish to incorporate discussion of ethical issues related to risk communication into their classes are invited to attend. This issue of Bioethics in Brief lists the schedule and speakers who will be presenting on the topic of genetically modified organisms, a critical issue for Iowa farmers and consumers.
| 8:15 | Coffee and Rolls |
| 8:45 | Institutional Welcome: Colin Scanes,
College of Agriculture, ISU Keynote Speech: Carl Cranor, University of California, Berkeley "Ethical Issues in Risk Communication: Genetically Modified Crops" |
| 10:30 | Break |
| 11:00 | Steven Shafer, USDA Office
of Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis "Ethical Issues in Risk Communication: Genetically Modified Crops" |
| 12:00 | Lunch |
| 1:00 | Dermot Hayes, Economics, ISU "Ethical Issues in Risk Communication: Genetically Modified Crops" |
| 2:00 | Panel Discussion with all speakers. Carl Cranor moderates. |
| 2:45 | Break |
| 3:15 | Concurrent Workshops: Stephen Sapp (ISU) "Guidelines for Discussing Ethical Issues in Risk Communication with the wider ISU Community and Beyond" |
| 5:00 | End |
Wednesday, January 5
| 8:15 | Coffee and bagels |
| 8:45 | Concurrent Workshops (Repeated) |
| 10:30 | Break |
| 11:00 | Concluding Session: All Speakers, Gary Comstock moderates. "How Can We Help Our Students Intelligently to Discuss Ethical Issues in Risk Communication?" |
| 12:00 | End |
Dr. Carl Cranor, professor of philosophy at University of California at Riverside and Associate Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (Ph.D., UCLA) hopes to bring a philosophical outlook to environmental policy making in California. "In most public discussion, we hear only about the costs of compliance and regulation," said Cranor. "A lot of policy decisions in environmental area are dominated by economists," whom he says tend to rely heavily on a cost-benefit analysis in policy making. Pure cost-benefit analysis comes from a utilitarian philosophy, which he considers to be "defective" as a moral theory. Its prime defect is that it gives insufficient attention to the distribution of benefits throughout a community. Instead, Cranor would like to see policy decision making based upon a theory of justice, which takes into account the distributional effects of a policy along with its overall costs and benefits. (Text from: http://prop65news.com/pubs/p65news/issues/9107/910703.html) Cranor's publications: Are Genes Us? The Social Consequences of the New Genetics (ed.), Rutgers University Press, 1994. Regulating Toxic Substances: A Philosophy of Science and the Law, Oxford University Press, 1993
Dr. Steven Shafer is Deputy Director for Environment and Plant Health in the USDA Office of Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis in Washington, D.C., where he has responsibility for review of the scientific basis of regulatory decisions and policies concerning resource conservation, international trade in plants and plant commodities, and biotechnology. Prior to his appointment to this position in 1998, he was an analyst with the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, focusing on pest risks associated with international agricultural trade. For 14 years, he was a research scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service and member of the faculty in the Department of Plant Pathology at North Carolina State University, where he conducted research on the impact of air pollutants on plants and associated microorganisms. He received his Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from North Carolina State University in 1983.
Dr. Dermot Hayes is associate professor of economics in the College of Agriculture at Iowa State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley in 1986. He conducts research on international trade, consumer demand, price analysis, commodity markets, agriculture policy. His published works include: "Hedging Production Risk with Options," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 75 (May 1993):408-415; "Testing the Stability of Preferences: A Nonparametric Approach," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 75 (May 1993):269-277; "Resolving Differences in Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept," American Economic Review (March 1994).
Dr. John J. Obrycki is professor of entomology at Iowa State University (Ph.D., Cornell University, 1982). Dr. Obrycki's major research area is the biological control of agricultural insect pests. His specific research interests include the biology, predatory behavior, and population ecology of insect predators, focusing on the Coccinellidae. The role of biological control agents in sustainable agricultural systems is also being actively examined. A weakness of many pest-management models is a trivial representation of predation. Fundamental knowledge is required to understand how insect predators subsist in crops, how they impact prey dynamics, and how changes in cropping practices influence predator populations. The goal of these investigations is to provide the basis for theoretical and experimental approaches needed to develop sustainable pest management systems.
Dr. Eric A. Abbott is professor of journalism and mass communication in the Greenlee School at Iowa State. He coordinates the departrnent's graduate program and chairs Iowa State's Technology and Social Change Program. He has a research focus in the area of communication technologies and their impacts in the United States and developing countries. He directed a project examining the adoption and use of microcomputers and other communication technologies by Iowa and New York farmers over a 10-year period. His papers for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication cover such topics as public education campaigns on science topics, impact of new technologies, and small-scale community volunteer newspapers.
Dr. Stephen Sapp is associate professor of sociology in the College of Agriculture at Iowa State University. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1984. He conducts research on consumer food preferences in foreign markets, consumer acceptance of food production and processing technologies, and social and demographic effects on dietary quality. He currently has funding to conduct a market test of irradiated food, wherein he will be testing theories of risk assessment and communication. His research on consumer risk assessments focuses on how these assessments are socially constructed through interactions with others and the impact of risk communication messages on the social construction of risk.
Dr. Gary Comstock is coordinator of the Iowa State University Bioethics Program and associate professor in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department. He is perhaps best known for his work with the ISU Bioethics Institute, a series of faculty development workshops that have assisted hundreds of life scientists from around the world to introduce discussions of ethics into their courses. He has published more than 50 articles and book chapters on ethics and philosophy of religion. In 1998 he won the College of Liberal Arts and Science's Award for Excellence in Outreach.
If you are an Iowa State University professor who would like to attend the Bioethics Faculty Retreat, copy the application from our Web site, paste it into an e-mail and send it to bioethics@iastate.edu.
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