Miss-Delectable
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http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/12989571.htm
The growing complexity of medical technology has created new questions about what's right and wrong in health care decisions from in vitro fertilization to end-of-life situations.
And people need to think and talk about such things.
That's the premise of the three-day conference on "The Ethics of Biomedical Research and Practice," that started Monday in the Alerus Center.
About 80 people registered the first day, but organizer Jim Thomasson, a former professor at Georgetown University, said figures today upward of 200 will show up.
Scholars from around the world and across the nation headline the conference. Janet Malek, a professor at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, suggested a provocative thesis in a session Monday: that parents using in-vitro fertilization should choose an embryo with healthy genes over one with genetic proneness to such diseases as Huntington's chorea, or disabilities such as, perhaps, Down syndrome.
Her extreme example of such "genetic counseling" was a deaf lesbian couple in Maryland who chose a sperm donor who was deaf in order to have children who would share their deaf culture. The couple now has two such children, Malek said. "I think it's wrong," she said, because she doesn't believe it was in the best interest of the two children.
About 25 people, nurses, physicians, philosophy professors, chaplains and clergy, sat in Malek's presentation. And there was much discussion.
The Rev. John Rieth, chaplain at Altru, said the idea of such genetic counseling is troubling, citing recent reports of the decline in numbers of Down syndrome children because more parents, using newer testing techniques, are choosing to abort such fetuses.
Today's topics at the conference promise similarly controversial discussions. One of the keynote speakers, Jeffrey Kahn of the University of Minnesota, will speak at 12:30 p.m. on "Little Cells, Big Issues: The Ethics and Policy Debate Around Embryonic Stem Cell Research."
The growing complexity of medical technology has created new questions about what's right and wrong in health care decisions from in vitro fertilization to end-of-life situations.
And people need to think and talk about such things.
That's the premise of the three-day conference on "The Ethics of Biomedical Research and Practice," that started Monday in the Alerus Center.
About 80 people registered the first day, but organizer Jim Thomasson, a former professor at Georgetown University, said figures today upward of 200 will show up.
Scholars from around the world and across the nation headline the conference. Janet Malek, a professor at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, suggested a provocative thesis in a session Monday: that parents using in-vitro fertilization should choose an embryo with healthy genes over one with genetic proneness to such diseases as Huntington's chorea, or disabilities such as, perhaps, Down syndrome.
Her extreme example of such "genetic counseling" was a deaf lesbian couple in Maryland who chose a sperm donor who was deaf in order to have children who would share their deaf culture. The couple now has two such children, Malek said. "I think it's wrong," she said, because she doesn't believe it was in the best interest of the two children.
About 25 people, nurses, physicians, philosophy professors, chaplains and clergy, sat in Malek's presentation. And there was much discussion.
The Rev. John Rieth, chaplain at Altru, said the idea of such genetic counseling is troubling, citing recent reports of the decline in numbers of Down syndrome children because more parents, using newer testing techniques, are choosing to abort such fetuses.
Today's topics at the conference promise similarly controversial discussions. One of the keynote speakers, Jeffrey Kahn of the University of Minnesota, will speak at 12:30 p.m. on "Little Cells, Big Issues: The Ethics and Policy Debate Around Embryonic Stem Cell Research."