Calendar: Event: June 16-22: Medical Ethics in the 21st Century -- natural law perspedtive

This event is offered by a (re-)emerging school of medical ethics based on Aristotle's teaching of natural law in the Metaphysics, is synthesis with the Hebrew and Christian traditions of faith.  It thus is, essentially, a Nature/Grace dualistic approach to medicine and its ethics.  The school has been re-invigorourated in recent decades of the Catholic phlosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.  Reformational philosoophy in the seminal works of Herman Dooyeweerd and colleagues has offered an alternative to to Christian-Aristotelian syntheses starting with the Hellenistic period in philosophy.  One such formidible critique was the philosopher-historian of the history of philosophy, D H Th Vollenhoven who argued for the questioning of all synthesis thawt and the possiblity of the task of radical Christian construction in philosophy -- extensionably also in ethics and medical ethics.

-- Albert Gedraitis

Calendar for Academics in Medical Ethics: June 16-22:

Medical Ethics in the Twenty-First Century
June 16-22, 2013

This seminar will examine the most important ethical questions that arise in the everyday practice of medicine. The framework of its analysis will be the theory of natural law that developed from the synthesis of ancient Greek thought (including the Hippocratic corpus) with Judaism and then Christianity. This framework will be contrasted with principlism and consequentialism as participants consider what sort of practice medicine is, whether it has a rational end or goal, and how medicine and the goods that medicine seeks fit within the broader scope of human goods. 

Issues to be covered include the nature of the doctor-patient relationship; the limits of medicine; the meaning of autonomy; the place of conscience in the physician's work; the difference between an intended effect and a side effect; proportionality; human dignity; sexuality and reproduction; the beginning of life; disability; end-of-life care; and death. The seminar will consider an array of common clinical ethical cases and discuss what medicine, and ethics, requires in those scenarios. In the end, participants will develop intellectual tools that have for hundreds of years helped physicians discern how to practice medicine well (to be a good physician) in the face of medicine's moral and clinical complexities.

Faculty
Christopher O. Tollefsen, University of South Carolina
Farr A. Curlin, MD, University of Chicago 

Application Process
Applicants are required to submit the following materials to Patrick Hough byApril 1, 2013:
1. Completed application form.
2. Current resume or curriculum vitae.
3. A cover letter (no more than 500 words) describing your experience and interest in the seminar's topic.
4. A letter of recommendation
All inquiries regarding the seminar and the application process can be directed toPatrick Hough. Decisions will be send to applications by April 16, 2013, and a $200 registration fee covering room and board on the campus of Princeton University will be required by May 1, 2013.

Farr A. Curlin is Associate Professor 

of Medicine and Co-Director of the 

Program on Medicine and Religion at 

the University of Chicago. There he 

works with colleagues from the 

MacLean Center for Clinical Medical 

Ethics and the University of Chicago 

Divinity School to foster inquiry into 

and public discourse regarding the 

intersections of religion and the practice 

of medicine. After graduating from the 

University of North Carolina School of Medicine, he moved to the 

University of Chicago. There he completed internal medicine 

residency training and fellowships in both health services research 

and clinical ethics before joining the faculty. Curlin's empirical 

research charts the influence of physicians's moral traditions and 

commitments, both religious and secular, on physicians's clinical 

practices. His normative work addresses questions regarding whether 

and how physicians's religious commitments and practices should 

shape their practices of medicine in our plural democracy. Curlin and 

colleagues have authored numerous manuscripts published in the 

medicine and bioethics literatures, including a New England Journal 

of Medicine paper titled "Religion, Conscience, and Controversial 

Clinical Practices". He also edited a special issue ofTheoretical 

Medicine and Bioethics titled "Conscience and Clinical Practice: 

Medical Ethics in the Face of Moral Controversy".

Christopher O. Tollefsen is professor 

of philosophy at the University of 

South Carolina and a senior fellow at 

the Witherspoon Institute. His areas of specialization include moral 

philosophy and practical ethics. 

Currently he is doing work in natural 

law ethics, liberal perfectionism, 

medical ethics, the ethics and politics 

of inquiry, philosophical embryology, the nature of human action, 

end of life issues, and ethics and education. He has published 

extensively in academic journals on topics of bioethics, meta-ethics,

and the New Natural Law Theory, and has written for such popular 

publications as The New Atlantis, Public Discourse, First Things, and 

Touchstone. He obtained his PhD in philosophy from Emory 

University. Professor Tollefsen is the author of Biomedical Research 

and Beyond: Expanding the Ethics of Inquiry(2007) and coauthor 

(with Robert P. George) of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (2008).