Emory University Master of Arts in Bioethics Program

Are you thinking about a career in healthcare? Emory's MA in Bioethics is "a career-enhancing graduate degree that is ideal for those that are interested in the social and ethical challenges facing medicine, health and the life sciences and want to be best prepared to respond to these challenges." - Dr. Gerard Vong, Director. RSVP for the in-person Open House at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/OpenHouseSpring22

We are excited (and proud!) to announce that Jennifer Jin received this year's International Neuroethics Society award for Best Poster Contribution: Clinical Neuroethics. Always a great way to have your exemplary work acknowledged!

You can see her presentation here: https://vimeo.com/639786623

Happy Holidays!

Friendly reminder that the early admissions deadline for the MA-Bioethics degree is January 1, 2021! Learn more on our website: https://ethics.emory.edu/what-we-teach/masters-program.html

We've partnered with the Emory Transplant Center to bring you "A Kidney Donor's Experience in Donating to a Stranger" on January 12, 2021 at 11:30 am ET!

This presentation will allow Martha Gershun to tell her experience in volunteering to donate a kidney after reading a newspaper article about a woman who needed a transplant.

She and her friend John Lantos had many discussions about her decision and about some of the unexpected issues that arose during Martha's evaluation as possible donor. In this presentation, Martha will tell parts of her story and John will reflect on the history of bioethical controversies about kidney donation and allocation that may have shaped the current culture and preserved some archaic policies that may discourage donors and exacerbate disparities.

Hope to see you there! Join using this link information: https://bit.ly/3EhzdX0

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/95610884691?pwd=YmZxcEZPMnQrdUc2cmxLeDQzTTVDZz09
Meeting ID: 956 1088 4691
Passcode: 167165

It is well established that le***an, gay, bisexual, transgender, q***r plus ( +) individuals face substantial health disparities compared to the general population:

Pronouns and Advocacy in Medicine This article considers one student’s experience after coming out as nonbinary and voicing that their pronouns are they/them.

Join Emory’s MA-Bioethics program and the Rollins School of Public Health for a virtual information session on November 3 from 12:00 pm (noon) – 1:00 pm EST. Participants will learn about the MPH/MA-Bioethics dual-degree application and degree requirements, as well as, how this degree prepares students to meet the needs of individual and community interests in healthcare. To register and receive Zoom details, please visit: https://sphadmissions.emory.edu/register/?id=7b8d5d99-5d1c-4459-9328-58ed9fd1b62a

Congratulations to our very own Jennifer Jin. As a current MA in bioethics student, Jennifer is helping to advance the understanding of preserving medical decision making for those with a diminished capacity. Jennifer will be giving a presentation at the International Neuroethics Society Annual Meeting and joining others to help advance issues of social justice in neuroethics.

Joel Zivot, an alumnus of the MAB program here at the Emory Center for Ethics recently published this article on the the similarities between death rattle and capital punishment.

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

What the death rattle and capital punishment have in common - STAT Research on silencing the death rattle in a dying person raises questions about who benefits: dying people or those around them?

This week is the annual American Society of Bioethics and Humanities Conference. A number of our MAB faculty, students, alumni and Emory colleagues will be leading or co-facilitating sessions at the conference!

You can listen in on the virtual conference here: https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/planner.php?id=ASBH21

On Thursday, October 28th from 10:00 am – 11:30 am, Jasmine Burnett, one of our dual-degree MPH/MA-Bioethics students, will be giving her final capstone presentation via Zoom. Written as a series of odes to those that greatly influenced her, Jasmine’s capstone project is a dive into ethical evaluations of inequitable health practices that impact Black people and the resilience, perseverance, softness, and grace displayed by members of their community throughout and in spite of incessant injustice. For Zoom details, please email [email protected].

Bioethics MA alumnus, Andrew Ertzberger, recently published an OP-ED on the ethics of medical care of the unvaccinated for Knoxville News Sentinel

"Ethics demand that the unvaccinated should receive medical care" can be read here: http://ow.ly/Fe3U50GdWMc

Join us in welcoming our incoming bioethics students! 🎓

Their diverse interests include (but is not limited to) end-of-life care, ethical controversies in the medical field, racial disparities in healthcare and understanding the intersections of culture, race, gender and religion. We can’t wait to see what they accomplish during their time in the program.

Send them a warm welcome in the comments!

Ben Stoff, Associate Professor of Dermatopathology and Bioethics MA alumnus, has been exploring guiding principles for the prioritization of limited in-person dermatology appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is the first author on a paper in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology that addresses this topic: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32682028/

Guiding principles for prioritization of limited in-person dermatology appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic - PubMed Guiding principles for prioritization of limited in-person dermatology appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic

The Emory Center for Ethics is collaborating with the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities (ASBH) to sponsor a limited number of undergraduate student registrations for this year's ASBH virtual conference on October 11-16. 2021. If you're an undergraduate student and would like to attend this conference for free, please visit our website: https://lnkd.in/dari8pp

ASBH Student Sponsorship | Emory University | Atlanta GA To support the next generation of bioethicists, the Emory Center for Ethics is collaborating with the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities (ASBH) to sponsor a limited number of undergraduate student registrations for this year's ASBH virtual conference on October 11-16, 2021. To learn more ab...

Associate Professor of Dermatopathology and Bioethics MA program alumnus Ben Stoff explains the effects of paternalistic policies during COVID-19 on vulnerable populations in his most recent co-authored paper in the Journal of the National Medical Association. Check out his interesting paper on this topic: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33349470/

The Effects of Paternalistic Policies During COVID-19 on Vulnerable Populations - PubMed The Effects of Paternalistic Policies During COVID-19 on Vulnerable Populations

We get so excited (and proud!) when students and alumni publish their work in bioethics. Emily Michels, Ethics/Communications Officer at Electronic Environments and Bioethics MA alumna co-authored a paper in the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. This paper addresses payment types and amounts for risky human subject work in biomedical and socio-behavioral human research studies:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1556264620987773

Comparing Payments Between Sociobehavioral and Biomedical Studies in a Large Research University in Southern California - Brandon Brown, Logan Marg, Emily Michels, Zhiwei Zhang, Dario Kuzmanović, Karine Dubé, Jerome T Galea, 2021 Given the dearth of regulatory guidance and empirical research on practices of providing payments to research participants, our study aimed to examine whether t...

The Emory Center for Ethics is collaborating with the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities (ASBH) to sponsor a limited number of undergraduate student registrations for this year's ASBH virtual conference on October 11-16. 2021. If you're an undergraduate student and would like to attend this conference for free, please visit our website: https://ethics.emory.edu/mabioethics/students/asbh-student-sponsorship.html

We continue to be proud of the work our students and alumni are doing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bryan Medilien, a 4+1 Bioethics dual degree student, has been working as a Program Assistant at Core Response. In this role, he has been administering free COVID-19 testing for underserved populations in Fulton County, GA and provides translation services for Spanish and French patients.

If governments were to use SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests to manage who can re-enter the workplace, this would be a sacrifice of privacy. Is the sacrifice worth it?

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/opinion-public-health-trumps-privacy-in-a-pandemic-67429

Opinion: Public Health Trumps Privacy in a Pandemic If governments were to use SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests to manage who can re-enter the workplace, society must accept a sacrifice of privacy.

This week's "Thought of the Week" is brought to you by the Hastings Center.

What are your thoughts?

Ever heard of "Patient Preference Predictor" or PPP?

A PPP would predict which treatment option a given incapacitated patient would most likely prefer, based on the individual’s characteristics and information on what treatment preferences are correlated with these characteristic.

But, is this a step in a better direction ethically for incapacitated patients?

Read the full piece here: https://academic.oup.com/jmp/article/39/2/104/872658

Use of a Patient Preference Predictor to Help Make Medical Decisions for Incapacitated Patients Abstract. The standard approach to treatment decision making for incapacitated patients often fails to provide treatment consistent with the patient’s preferenc

Happy Independence Day to the United States of America.

In November 2018, a scientist in China claimed to have edited a gene in two human embryos and implanted them in their mother’s womb, resulting in the birth of genetically altered twin girls. The case caused international outrage in scientific circles, and a couple of months later, many scientists called for a global moratorium on gene editing embryos.

What are your thoughts on this? Leave them below in the comments!

Scientists explain the future ethical implications of this research with regards to brain organoids, a laboratory-made structure that is designed to grow and behave like the brain.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210408112321.htm

Society is not ready to make human brains Scientists explain the future ethical implications of this research with regards to brain organoids, a laboratory-made structure that is designed to grow and behave like the brain.

As a bioethicist, there are a number of important issues that the advancement of technology has caused changes in. What are the most pressing issues in bioethics?

Check out the top 8 outlined by .

Top 8 Issues in Bioethics in 2020 - The Medical Futurist Top Issues & Topics in Bioethics 1) The most important bioethical topic is medical data privacy 2) Bioethical issues of increasing life expectancy 3)

Today we honor , one of the oldest national holidays commemorating emancipation from slavery in the United States.

On this day in 1865, enslaved African-Americans learned of their freedom from Union troops in Galveston Bay, TX—two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

Joel Zivot, an alumnus of the Masters in Bioethics program here at the Emory Center for Ethics recently authored this article on the legal implications of the Covid-19 pandemic being the result of a
'lab leak'. Read it here: https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/93065

We want to hear from you! Is the US in any position to hold China legally responsible for the Covid-19 outbreak? If so, how do you think we should move forward? Leave your opinion in the comments.

The Legal Stakes of a Lab Leak China could be on the hook for a trillion dollars, but the U.S. isn't blameless

The Master of Arts in Bioethics from Emory University provides advanced, interdisciplinary education on the ethical and social challenges that face health care, public health, and the biomedical sciences. Learn more about our program by visiting our website: https://ethics.emory.edu/mabioethics/index.html

Home | Emory University | Atlanta GA "Emory University’s Master of Arts in Bioethics is a career-enhancing graduate degree that is ideal for those that are interested in the social and ethical challenges facing medicine, health and the life sciences and want to be best prepared to respond to these challenges." - Dr. Gerard Vong, Dire...