Community Medicine Seminar Series

The Contributions of a Human Rights Approach to Bioethics

Audrey R. Chapman, Ph.D. †
Director, Science and Human Rights Program
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Thursday, July 28, 2005 • 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Academic Research Building, Large Seminar Room (EG-013)
University of Connecticut Health Center

For lunch, please RSVP by July 26, 2005 to Theo Ungewitter at 860.679.5495.

About the Speaker

Lisa A. Eckenwiler, Ph.D. Audrey R. Chapman is the Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science and Human Rights Program and the Co-Director of a new AAAS initiative on Science and Intellectual Property in the Public Interest. She previously also served as the Director of the AAAS Program of Dialogue between Science and Religion and continues as their Senior Associate for Ethics.

She received a Ph.D. in public law and government from Columbia University and graduate degrees in theology and ethics from New York Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of sixteen books and numerous articles and monographs on topics related to bioethics, human rights, religious ethics, and intellectual property.

She has had faculty appointments at Barnard College and Columbia University, the University of Ghana, and the University of Nairobi. She has also taught courses at New York Theological Seminary, Wesley Theological Seminary, Andover Newton Seminary, and Georgetown University. She served as a consultant for The Ford Foundation in Lebanon and Kenya and as an advisor in Social Statistics for the Kenya Central Bureau of Statistics. Formerly the World Issues Secretary of the United Church Board for World Ministries, she coordinated justice, peace and human rights programs for the international agency of the United Church of Christ. While in that position, she was a member and then chair of the National Council of Churches Human Rights Committee.

Issues linking human rights, ethics, and health are a major professional focus. She has served as the principal investigator for several AAAS projects on these subjects. Two of these projects resulted in publications that she edited: Health Care Reform: A Human Rights Approach (Georgetown University, 1994) and Health Care and Information Ethics: Protecting Fundamental Human Rights (Sheed and Ward, 1997). She has also taught graduate courses in medical ethics. At the request of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she led a an expert mission in 1997 to examine human rights violations in the health sector under apartheid and to make recommendations on how to build a culture of human rights in the health professions and the health sector as a whole. She coauthored a report based on the mission's findings and recommendations entitled Human Rights and Health: The Legacy of Apartheid (AAAS, 1998).

For the past ten years she has had a close relationship with the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and assisted with the drafting of the general comments on the rights to health and to water and their statement on intellectual property and human rights. She also works with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health and the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organizations.

She also has a strong professional interest in the ethical implications of new technologies, particularly genetic developments. She has served as the codirector of AAAS projects dealing with genetic patenting, human germ-line intervention, stem cell research, and behavioral genetics. She coauthored the AAAS reports on stem cell research (Stem Cell Research and Applications: Monitoring the Frontiers of Biomedical Research, November 1999) and on inheritable genetic modifications (Human Inheritable Genetic Modifications: Assessing Scientific, Ethical, Religious, and Policy Issues, September 2000). She is the author of Unprecedented Choices: Religious Ethics at the Frontiers of Genetic Science (Fortress Press, 1999) and coauthor and coeditor of Designing Our Descendants: The Promises and Perils of Genetic Modifications (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). Another coedited volume, Wrestling with Behavioral Genetics: Science, Ethics and the Prospect of Public Conversation, will be published later this year (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

She has been the director or codirector of grants and projects from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, the Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the National Institutes of Health, the John Templeton Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

She currently serves on the boards of the Children's Environmental Health Fund, the Society of Christian Ethics, and the Metagora initiative, which is an international research network seeking to improve methodologies and research related to human rights.

† - Dr. Chapman is a candidate for the Joseph M. Healey Endowed Chair in the Medical Humanities, Law & Bioethics

About the Educational Activity

Target Audience

Physicians and Other Health Professionals, Medical and Dental Students, Faculty

Objectives

At the end of this presentation, participants will:

  1. learn the basic elements of a human rights approach to bioethics;
  2. understand its contributions to more traditional approaches to bioethics; and
  3. explore its applications to decisions about new technologies and medical innovations.

Accreditation

The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians accredits The University of Connecticut School of Medicine. The University of Connecticut School of Medicine takes responsibility for the content, quality and scientific integrity of this CME activity.

The University of Connecticut School of Medicine designates this educational activity for a maximum of 1.5 hours per session in category 1 credit towards the AMA Physician’s Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those hours of credit that he/she actually spent in the educational activity.

Conflict of Interest

All faculty participating in Continuing Medical Education activities sponsored by the University of Connecticut School of Medicine are required to disclose to the program audience any real or apparent conflict of interest related to the content of their presentations. Dr. Chapman does not have a financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organizations that could be perceived as a real or apparent conflict of interest in the context of the subject of his presentation, nor will he address any unlabeled use for a drug in this presentation.

Sponsors

University of Connecticut School of Medicine Office of Continuing Education, Department of Community Medicine and supported in part by an unrestricted educational grant from Agouron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.