Press Release
March 8, 2007
Contact: Jennifer Forbes
Phone: (732) 235-6356
UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Hosts Internationally-Renowned Bioethicists
- Community Seminar to Focus on Genetic Enhancement -
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NEW BRUNSWICK — Two internationally-recognized bioethicists will be the featured speakers at a free community seminar, Remaking Human Nature: The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement, at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Dan W. Brock, PhD, the Frances Glessner Lee professor of medical ethics in the department of social medicine and director of the division of medical ethics at Harvard Medical School, and Lee M. Silver, PhD, professor of molecular biology and public affairs at Princeton University will discuss if the manipulation of human genetics should be considered therapy or enhancement, who makes decisions about genetic manipulation and who benefits from it.
The free seminar is part of the annual Mates David and Hinna Stahl Memorial Lecture on Bioethics at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and will be held at 4 p.m., Wednesday, March 28, 2007, at the Clinical Academic Building, room 1302, 125 Paterson Street, New Brunswick.
Dr. Brock served as staff philosopher on the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine in 1981-82, and in 1993 was a member of the Ethics Working Group of the Clinton Task Force on National Health Reform. He has been a consultant in biomedical ethics and health policy to national and international bodies, including the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and the World Health Organization. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow and former Board member of the Hastings Center. He was president of the American Association of Bioethics in 1995-96, and was a founding Board Member of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. More than 150 of Dr. Brock’s articles in bioethics and in moral and political philosophy have appeared in books and peer-reviewed scholarly journals. His current research focuses on the prioritization of health resources and rationing, with a special focus on cost-effectiveness analysis, and on genetic selection for enhancement and to prevent disability.
Dr. Silver has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is the recipient of a National Institutes of Health MERIT award. He has been elected to the governing boards of the Genetics Society of America and the International Mammalian Genome Society, and was a member of the New Jersey Bioethics Commission Task Force formed to recommend reproductive policy for the New Jersey State Legislature. He has published more than 200 scientific articles in the fields of genetics, evolution, reproduction, embryology and behavioral science, and other scholarly papers on topics at the interface of biotechnology, law, ethics, and religion, and is the author of two genetics textbooks.
The endowed lecture is named in honor of Mates David and Hinna Stahl, parents of Theodore J. Stahl, M.D., clinical professor of radiology and medicine. This is the tenth lecture in the annual series. Parking at the Paterson Street deck, adjacent to the Clinical Academic Building, will be complimentary and light refreshments will be served following the lecture. For more information, directions and to RSVP for the seminar, call 732-235-5810 or log on to http://rwjms.umdnj.edu/.
UMDNJ is the nation’s largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,500 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and a school of public health on five campuses. Annually, there are more than two million patient visits at UMDNJ facilities and faculty practices at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a statewide mental health and addiction services network.
