Bioethics@

Volume 1, Issue 1

October 1999 Issue

Welcome to the first issue of Bioethics in Brief, a newsletter published by the Bioethics Program, part of ISU's Office of Biotechnology, to discuss ethical issues in life sciences. Future issues of this newsletter will focus on an ISU professor and his or her contribution to ethical discussions in the classroom. But first, it is important to know about the Bioethics Program itself, so this issue describes who we are and what we do.

Who We Are

Our History

The ISU Bioethics Program began in 1986 when the Iowa State Legislature directed Iowa State University to explore the ethical, social, and environmental implications of agricultural biotechnology. Since that time, the Office of Biotechnology at Iowa State University has funded the program. Today, our mission reflects many of the same concerns it did in 1986.

Our Mission

• We seek to nurture reasoned examination of ethical issues in life sciences.
• We provide assistance and education to ISU faculty who are discussing ethical issues with their students.
• We support faculty as they reflect on the ethical dimensions of their research.

Our Advisory Committee

The key to our success belongs to the Bioethics Advisory Committee. The members, dedicated to making the university and the world aware of bioethics issues, come from a variety of academic departments at ISU.

Michael Bishop, Philosophy & Religious Studies
Ed Braun, Plant Pathology
Don Duvick, Agronomy
Clark Ford, Food Science and Human Nutrition
Steve Ford, Animal Science
Jack Girton, Zoology and Genetics
Bonnie Glatz, Food Science and Food Nutrition
Surya Mallapragada, Chemical Engineering
John Mayfield, Zoology and Genetics
Gavin Naylor, Zoology and Genetics
John Obrycki, Entomology
Thomas Peterson, Zoology and Genetics
Barbara Pleasants, Zoology and Genetics
Ricardo Salvador, Agronomy
Michele Svatos, Philosophy & Religious Studies
Arnold van der Valk, Botany
Dan Voytas, Zoology and Genetics-Ag
Curtis Youngs, Animal Science

What We Do

The Bioethics Program sponsors a variety of workshops, seminars, retreats, and lectures.

• Fall orientation--A four-hour workshop on research ethics for entering graduate students. Held at the,beginning of fall semester and co-sponsored by Interdepartmental Genetics.
  
• Winter faculty retreat--An annual faculty development opportunity, to achieve our mission ofproviding assistance to science faculty discussing ethical issues in class. Recent topics haveincluded relationships between university and industry, environmental ethics, research ethics, and risk assesment. Bioethics Advisory Committee.
  
• Professional practice modules course--A two-part series intended for graduate students and interested faculty and staff. One part of the course covers Science as a Profession; the second part covers Intellectual Property.
  
• Departmental seminar series--Dedicated to the reasoned examination of bioethical issues in the regular seminar series of life science departments. The Office of Biotechnology provides $500 to any life science department that wants to bring a speaker on ethics into their regular departmental seminar series. The series is critical to our mission of supporting faculty, staff, and students as they reflect on the ethical dimensions of their research.
  
• Faculty travel grant program--The Office of Biotechnology contributes up to half of the travel expenses of life science faculty members presenting refereed papers on ethics at professional scientific meetings.
  
• Bioethics mentors--Faculty who volunteer to assist other members of their department in integrating discussions of ethics into their courses and who promote bioethics in their departmental seminar series.
  

The Bioethics Institute

The Program is home to the internationally acclaimed Iowa State University Model Bioethics Institute. Since 1991, theInstitute has helped life science faculty introduce ethics into their classes. At Iowa State, more than 100 Institute graduates include ethics discussions in science classrooms, reaching more than 5000 students per year.

Other universities have conducted the Institute on their campuses, including Purdue, Michigan State, Illinois, North Carolina State, and the University of Lisbon in Portugal. As a result, bioethics discussions now regularly occur on each of these campuses. A total of more than 400 life scientists from around the world have participated in a Bioethics Institute.

The Bioethics Institute is funded by the Iowa State University Office of Biotechnology, the National Science Foundation, and the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council.

For More Information

Publications

The Ag Bioethics Forum, a biannual online newsletter, presents debates, case studies, and other articles on bioethics.

To viewcurrent and back issues on the web, go to the following URL: www.biotech.iastate.edu/Bioethics.html

Other Sources

For more information on the Bioethics Program, visit us on the web at: www.biotech.iastate.edu/Bioethics.html

A complete list of scheduled lectures is online at the URL: www.biotech.iastate.edu/publications/Bioethics/events.html

If you would like to introduce ethics discussions into your life science courses, pedagogical tools designed for this purpose are available on the bioethics web site. They include cases on animal welfare and herbacide resistant rice, among others.

Bioethics-Related Lectures and Seminars

October 21--8:00 p.m. "Wither the Farm? Moving Beyond the Current Crisis in Agriculture" panel discussion. Panel includesPaul Lasley, ISU professor of sociology; Nan Bonfils, famer and program assistant at Practical Farmers of Iowa; Kathleen Delate, assistant professor of Horticulture and Agronomy; Mike Duffy, professor of economics. Lois Wright Morton, assistant professor of sociology will moderate. Sun Room, Memorial Union.

October 22--2:00-3:00 p.m."Ethics in Financing Start-Up Companies" with John Pappajohn of Pappajohn Capital Resources and Equity Dynamics. 205 Carver or 160 Scheman (to be determined).

October 24--7:00 p.m."Genes, Genesis, and God" with Holmes Rolston, Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. St. John's Episcopal Church parish hall. Sponsored by St. John's and the Ames Jewish Congregation.

October 25--8:00 p.m."Challenges in Environmental Ethics" with Holmes Rolston, Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. 1352 Gilman. Reception to follow in the Molecular Biology Building. Sponsored by St. John's Episcopal Church and the Ames Jewish Congregation.

October 26 and 28--9:00 a.m. "Ethical Theory and Intensive Animal Confinement" with Professor Gary Comstock in Dr. Donald Lay's Animal Behavior and Welfare class (An Sci 336). Part I: October 26; Part II: October 28, Kildee 107.

October 28--8:00 p.m. "Feeding the Favoured: Tailor-Made Fats" with Frank D. Gunstone, Professor Emeritus at St. Andrews University. 1010 LeBaron Auditorium.

November 1--8:00 p.m. "A Feminist Analytics of the Global Economy" with Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Sun Room, Memorial Union.

November 2--12:00 p.m. "Social Conflict, Trade Disputes, and Genetically Modified Organisms" Panel members include: Richard Ross, College of Veterinary Medicine; John Obrycki, Entomology; Charlotte Bronson, Plant Pathology; Clare Hinrichs, Sociology; and Dermot Hayes, Economics. Colin Scanes, College of Agriculture, will moderate. Pioneer Room, Memorial Union.

November 4--1:10 p.m."Ethics and Transgenic Animals" with Professor Gary Comstock in Dr. Chris Tuggle's Animal Molecular Biology class (An Sci 451/551).

November 11-2:00 p.m. "World Debt and Jubilee 2000" with Jim Leach, Congressman for Iowa's First District. Leach chairs the House Banking and Financial Services Committee. He is the sponsor of the House Jubilee 2000 bill, an attempt to relieve the debt burden of the world's poorest countries. Pioneer Room, Memorial Union.

November 11-8:00 p.m. "The Asian Economic Crisis" with Nariman Behravesh, chief international economist and research director of Standard and Poors DRI. Behravesh manages a group that covers economic, financial and political developments in more than 106 countries. He also was host of the PBS series, Inside the Global Economy. Sun Room, Memorial Union.

November 12-"Is a Global Bioethics Both Desirable and Possible?" with Rosemarie Tong, Distinguished Professor in Health Care Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and at the Center for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Carolina, Charlotte. Her books include Feminist Philosophies: Problems, Theories and Applications and Feminine and Feminist Ethics. Tong co-ordinates the "Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Network." Oak Room, Memorial Union.

Published by: Office of Biotechnology, Bioethics Outreach
Ames, Iowa 50011-3260, (515) 294-9818, biotech@iastate.edu
Questions about the site?  E-mail biotech@www.biotech.iastate.edu
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Last Update 05/23/03