Recent Visiting Speakers

Paul Appelbaum, MD, PhD--2008 Max and Sara Cowan Memorial Lecturer   

Paul Appelbaum, MD, is  Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine & Law; and Director, Division of Psychiatry, Law, and Ethics, Dept. of Psychiatry, Columbia University. Dr. Apelbaum is the author of many articles and books on law and ethics in clinical practice. He is Past President of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, and the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, and serves as Chair of the Council on Psychiatry and Law for the American Psychiatric Association. He is currently a member of the MacArthur Foundation Network on Mandatory Outpatient Treatment. He has received the Isaac Ray Award of the American Psychiatric Association for "outstanding contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychiatric aspects of jurisprudence," was the Fritz Redlich Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. As our 2008 Cowan Lecturer, Dr. Appelbaum presented "Therapeutic Misconception in Clinical Research" at Internal Medicine Grand Rounds, "Suicide and Violence on Campus: Legal and Ethical Issues in a free, public lecture, and joined in an Evening Ethics discussion on his article, "Voluntariness of Consent to Research."  For a link to video of these two lectures: http://stream.utah.edu/m/show_grouping.php?g=991d6f289b137b877

18th Annual Intermountain Medical Ethics Conference
Setting Priorities For Healthcare in Utah: What Choices Are We Ready to Make?

Susan Dorr Goold, MD,MHSA, MA is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Bioethics Program at the University of Michigan, where she earned her medical degree  and her master’s in Health Management and Policy.  She did her internal medicine residency at the University of Pittsburgh.  Her research focuses on allocation of scarce health care resources, especially the priorities of patients and the public. Her projects, using an allocation simulation exercise, CHAT (Choosing Healthplans All Together), have involved educators, community organizations, employer groups, and others in over twenty states and several countries. She has served on editorial boards of the Annals of Internal Medicine, American Journal of Bioethics, the MIT Press, and Rowman and Littlefield, and on the boards for the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and the International Society on Priorities in Health Care. In 2007 she was appointed to the American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.

Marjorie Ginsburg, MPH, is founder and Executive Director of Sacramento Healthcare Decisions (SHD).  An independent nonprofit organization formed in 1994, its purpose is to involve the public in improving healthcare policy and practice.  For the past eight years, her work has focused primarily on identifying societal decisions on the use of finite healthcare resources. She also works with other states in their efforts to involve citizens in setting coverage priorities.  Marge currently serves on NCQA’s Committee on Performance Measurement; the board of Integrated Healthcare Association; California Technology Assessment Forum and California Hospital Assessment & Reporting Task Force (CHART). Previously, she was co-chair of the California Coalition for Compassionate Care and served on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Advisory Committee for its initiative Community-State Partnerships to Improve End-of-Life Care.  Prior to moving to Sacramento in 1990, she spent 15 years in management and administration of community-based geriatric services in San Francisco.

  

Dr. Allan Ainsworth received his Ph.D. in medical anthropology at the University of Utah in 1984. He has worked with marginalized peoples for the last 30 years, including projects with the Zuni Tribe of New Mexico, the Hopi Tribe of Arizona, and the Tulalip Tribes and Quinault Tribe of Washington State. Allan is currently the executive director of Wasatch Homeless Health Care, Inc., a position he has held since 1988. He is a member of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Medical Anthropology and a Fellow of the Association of Applied Anthropology. He also holds an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah and facilitates classes for first and second-year medical students in social medicine for the School of Medicine. Allan is past chair of the Board of Directors of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council and sits on a number of state and local boards in Utah. He received the National Association of Community Health Centers’ Elizabeth K. Cooke Advocacy MVP Award in March of 2008.

In January 2005, Dr. David N. Sundwall was nominated by Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. to serve as Executive Director of the Utah State Department of Health (UDOH) and confirmed by the State Senate.  In this capacity he supervises a workforce of almost 1,000 employees with a budget of approximately $2.0 billion.  He currently serves as President of Association of State & Territorial Health Officers (ASHTO), serves on the Executive Committee of ASTHO and represents this organization on the National Governor’s Association’s (NGA) State e-Health Alliance.Dr Sundwall has extensive experience in federal government and national health policy, including: Chairman of the CDC’s Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee; Chairman of the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME);  Administrator, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); Assistant Surgeon General in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service; Co-Chairman of the HHS Secretary’s Task Force on Medical Liability and Malpractice, and was the Secretary’s designee to the National Commission to Prevent Infant Mortality. He has also served as Health Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.

Dr. Sundwall is Board certified in Internal Medicine and Family Practice.  He is licensed to practice medicine in the District of Columbia and Utah and currently volunteers weekly at a UDOH public health clinic for the underserved in Salt Lake City.   Dr. Sundwall has academic appointments at three medical schools: the University of Utah, Georgetown University School of Medicine and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.

Benjamin Wilfond, M.D.--2008 David Green Memorial Lecturer

Dr. Wilfond is Professor and Chief of the Division of Bioethics in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.  He directs the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics which is co-sponsored by Children's Hospital.  He is also Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medical History and Ethics. Dr. Wilfond's program provides consultation and education, studies ethical issues in pediatric care and research, and trains clinicians in Pediatric Bioethics.  Research projects focus on recruitment for research, cognitive disabilities, genetic testing, biobanks, global health, and ethics quality improvement.  Dr. Wilfond was formerly the Head of the Bioethics and Social Policy Unit at the NIH National Genome Research Institute and Deputy Director of the Institute's Bioethics core.  After his pediatric residency and pulmonary fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, he served on the faculty at the University of Arizona and Johns Hopkins.  Dr. Wilfond's grants and publications address many ethical issues, but especially those in clinical and genetic research and treatment that involve infants and children.  Dr. Wilfond facilitated an Evening Ethics on "Waiving Informed Consent in Newborn Screening Research: Balancing Social Value and Respect", presented at Pediatric Grand Rounds at Primary Children's Medical Center, on "Show Me the Money" Financial Considerations and Ethical Implications in Responding to Parental Requests for Medical Interventions in Children with Profound Disabilities," and presented in the 2008 Senior Medical Ethics course on "Growth attenuation in children with profound disabilities: Best interests, parental decision-making, and community impact."

Paul Wolpe, MD, PhD--2007 Max and Sara Cowan Memorial Lecturer

Dr. Paul Wolpe, PhD, is Associate Professor of  Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also holds appointments in the Department of Medical Ethics and the Department of Sociology. He is President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and is Co-Editor of the American Journal of Bioethics. Dr. Wolpe serves as the first Chief of Bioethics for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). As our 2007 Cowan lecturer, Dr. Wolpe presented Borrowing Our Bodies: The Vexing Ethics of Human Medical Research for Internal Medicine Grand Rounds on Thursday, November 15, 2007 and a public lecture that same day entitled Boomers and Biotech: How the Needs of America's Biggest Cohort Drive Biotechnology. That evening, he facilitated our Evening Ethics Program on Neurocognitive Enhancement: What Can We Do and What Should We Do?

Atul Gawande is Assistant Professor of Surgery and Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health.  He is a staff writer on medicine and science for the New Yorker.  He is also author of the award winning book, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, and Better: A Surgeons Notes on Performance.  Dr. Gawande spoke at the Huntsman Cancer Institute Auditorium at 4 p.m. on Friday, August 24th.

17th Annual Intermountain Medical Ethics Conference
Epidemics: Ethics, Edicts and Economics

The media has raised public awareness and concern about the inevitability of another global epidemic of influenza.  Many readers and viewers react at a personal level wondering what is the risk to us and what can we do to prevent it.  Our conference addressed the probable situation where most cases cannot be prevented or treated. In that circumstance many millions will be ill, millions will die, billions of dollars will be lost, our economy and infrastructure will be severely affected, and ethical principles will be stretched or ignored.  The conference explored how to assess and minimize human and economic losses and how to design and implement legal and policy measures that work to preserve public health with minimal compromise of human rights.  We explored the ethical challenges and sought an ethical formula within which government, health care institutions, and health care providers can respond to a disease catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude. 

Mark A. Rothstein, J.D.  holds the Herbert F. Boehl Chair of Law and Medicine and is Director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. He received his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and his J.D. from Georgetown University. Professor Rothstein is a leading authority on the ethical, legal, and social implications of genetics, privacy, occupational health, employment law, and public health law. He is Chair of the Subcommittee on Privacy and Confidentiality of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, the statutory advisory committee to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on health information policy, including the

privacy regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. He is the immediate past-President of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics. He is the author or editor of 19 books. His latest book is Genetics: Ethics, Law and Policy (with Andrews & Mehlman).

Chris Feudtner - 2007 David Green Memorial Lecturer

Our 2007 David Green Memorial Lecturer,  Chris Feudtner, M.D., Ph.D., M. P. H, is Assistant Professor  of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania.  Dr. Feudtner focuses on how to improve the quality of life for children with complex chronic conditions and how to counsel and support their families.  Dr. Feudtner is the Director of Research for the Pediatric Advanced Care Team and the Integrated Care Service  at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.  His research interests are in   ethics and the history and sociology of medicine.  His interests are reflected in his book, Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and the Transformation of Illness (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

Dr. Feudtner facilitated an Evening Ethics Discussion: “Likely Common Biases and Efforts at Debiasing in Clinical Ethics” .  He will present Pediatric Grand Rounds: “Beyond Decision Making: Ethics and the Everyday of Pediatric Palliative Care”  and also present “Ethics in a Short White Coat” to the 4th year Medical Students.

Lainie Ross, M.D., Ph.D.

We were fortunate once again this year to have an outstanding and distinguished visitor present the David Green Memorial Lectures. Lainie Ross, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Chicago. Her medical degree is from the University of Pennsylvania and her Doctorate in Philosophy is from Yale. She is a medical ethicist and Associate Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics and serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics section on bioethics, and the American Philosophical Association section on medicine and philosophy.

Her academic interests are diverse and focus on research ethics, genetics, transplantation, and pediatric ethics. She is currently working on a NIH funded grant on newborn screening. She presented Pediatric Grand Rounds on April 20, 2006 where her topic was: “Children in Medical Research: Has the Pendulum Swung Too Far?” Later that day she made a presentation to our senior medical students in their medical ethics course entitled: “The Science, Ethics and Politics of Stem Cells” On the evening before her lectures, she facilitated our Evening Ethics Discussion which focused on an article she wrote and a number of thoughtful responses published with it in the Journal of Clinical Ethics. The subject for discussion is “Doctor if this were your child, what would you do?”.

16th Annual Intermountain Medical Ethics Conference
Rethinking Death: A Conference on Meaning, Ethics, and Policy Issues in Death and Dying

New issues in brain biology, end of life options, high profile cases of brain death and chronic vegetative state, and new criteria for organ donation, have refocused public and medical attention on death and dying. At our conference, leading experts on health law, religious ethics, health policy, and end-of-life medical practice, taught about and explored these complex but singularly important challenges.

	Stuart Youngner, M.D., is currently Chair of the Department of Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, and the Susan E. Watson Professor of Bioethics. Dr. Youngner is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar in biomedical ethics and has published and spoken on topics including: decisions to limit life-sustaining treatment, ethics committees, physician-assisted suicide, advance directives, definitions of death,
and ethical issues in organ retrieval and transplantation. He served as President of the Society for Bioethics Consultation from 1994-1997 and is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. Dr. Youngner has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. He is the editor or coeditor of six books, including the recently released The Definition of Death: Contemporary Controversies (Johns Hopkins). Dr. Youngner also holds an appointment as Professor Invitado at the Instituto Superior de Ciencias Medicas in Havana, Cuba.
	Laurie Zoloth, Ph.D., is Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine, and of Religion in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. At the Feinberg School, she also serves as Director of the Center for Bioethics, Science, and Society. From 1995-2003, she was Professor of Ethics and Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University. In 2001, she was the President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. She is a member of the NASA National Advisory Council, the nation's highest civilian advisory board for NASA; The NASA Planetary Protection Advisory Committee; the Executive Committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research; and she is the Chair of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Bioethics Advisory Board.
	Mette Rurup, Ph.D., received her PhD in medical biology in September 2005 from the Department of Public and Occupational Health at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam where she received a scholarship as a board member of the study association. Her PhD thesis was about people who request euthanasia or assisted suicide because they are 'weary of life', and about people with advance directives for euthanasia. She is currently continuing her post doctoral research at the VU University Medical Center on euthanasia, older people with a wish to die, and advance directives. She has published several publications in peer-reviewed journals on these subjects.

Jonathon Moreno, Ph.D.  - 2006 Cowan Memorial Lecturer

We were indeed fortunate to have as our 2006 Cowan Memorial Lecturer Jonathan D. Moreno, Ph.D.. He is the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia. Dr. Moreno is a Past President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and a Fellow of the Hastings Center and the New York Human Research Protection Advisory Committee and a Senior Consultant for the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and has advised the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

A prolific author and persuasive speaker, Dr. Moreno's work is often quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He himself has appeared on all of the network evening news programs and NPR's All Things Considered and Science Friday. During his visit, he drew upon work from his recent books: Is There an Ethicist in the House?, Undue Risks: Secret State Experiments on Humans and his soon to be published book Mind Wars: National Security and the Brain.

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