Course Speakers

Module 1 – Ethics: What is it and Why is it Important? 

Michael Stingl, Ph.D.

Michael Stingl received his BA from the University of Wisconsin-       Madison and his MA and PhD from the University of Toronto.  He has taught at Rice University, the University of Calgary, and the University of Lethbridge, where he is currently Chair of the Philosophy Department. Michael is the Editorial Board Coordinator for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy and Past Coordinator of the Liberal Education Program at the University of Lethbridge. He is a former member of the PHEN Board, and for many years a member of the ethics committee in his health region. Dr. Stingl has published book chapters and journal articles on the history of twentieth century ethics, the biological foundations of human moral thought and behavior, euthanasia, and the just allocation of health services. He is currently working on two books: one on evolutionary ethics and one on euthanasia.


Module 2 - Duties or Consequences: Foundational Ideas

Alister Browne, Ph.D.

Alister Browne is a Clinical Associate Professor and Ethics Theme Director in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, where he organizes the ethics and law lectures for the medical school. Dr. Browne is a member of the ethics committees of Vancouver Hospital, GF Strong and Geo Person Centres, British Columbia Children's Hospital, Sunny Hill Hospital, and Burnaby Hospital. He is also on the Board of Directors of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, and is the Canadian Correspondent for the Cambridge Health Care Ethics Quarterly. Dr. Browne is recently retired as the Chair of the Philosophy Department at Langara College in Vancouver, and Ethics Consultant and Chair of the Ethics Committee at Vancouver Hospital.


Module 3 – Common Morality: A Principlist Approach

Robert M. Veatch, Ph.D.

Robert Veatch is a Professor of Medical Ethics and the former Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. He also holds appointments as Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Georgetown's Medical Center.

His recent books includeCase Studies in Biomedical Ethics andPatient, Heal Thyself: How the "New Medicine" Puts the Patient in Charge. He is the Senior Editor of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal and a former member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Veatch received a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy from Purdue University (1961), a Masters of Science in Pharmacology from the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco (1962), and a Ph.D. concentrating in medical ethics from Harvard University in 1970. He has received honorary doctorates from Creighton University and Union University. In 2008 he received the Lifetime Achievement award from the American Society of Bioethics and the Humanities.

He was formerly the Senior Associate at the Hastings Center in New York. Dr. Veatch served as an ethics consultant in the preparation of the legal case of Karen Ann Quinlan, the woman whose parents won the right to forgo life-support (1975-76) and testified in the case of Baby K, the anencephalic infant whose mother insisted on the right of access to ventilatory support. He served as President of the Board of Directors of Hospice Care of the District of Columbia, is a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington Regional Transplant Consortium, and former member of the United Network for Organ Sharing Ethics Committee.


Module 4 - Respect for Autonomy: A Closer Look

childress.JPGJames F. Childress, Ph.D.

James F. Childress is the John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics and Professor of Medical Education at the University of Virginia, where he teaches in the Department of Religious Studies and directs the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life.

Childress is the author of numerous articles and several books in biomedical ethics, including Principles of Biomedical Ethics (with Tom L. Beauchamp), now in its sixth edition and translated into several languages; Priorities in Biomedical Ethics; Who Should Decide? Paternalism in Health Care; and Practical Reasoning in Bioethics, along with articles and books in other areas of ethics.

Childress was vice chair of the national Task Force on Organ Transplantation, a member of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, and a member of the presidentially-appointed National Bioethics Advisory Commission 1996-2001. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a fellow of the Hastings Center. In 1990, he was named Professor of the Year in the state of Virginia by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education; in 2002, he received the University of Virginia's highest honor - the Thomas Jefferson Award; and in 2004, he received the Life-Time Achievement Award from the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.


Module 5 - On Being Good: Virtue Ethics

Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D.

Edmund D. Pellegrino is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Medical Ethics and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He served as Chair of the President’s Council of Bioethics; Director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University; head of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Ethics at Georgetown; President of Catholic University; President and Chairman of the Yale-New Haven Medical Center; Chancellor and Vice President of Health Affairs at the University of Tennessee; founding Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Kentucky; and Founding Director and Vice President of the Health Sciences Center, State University of New York, Stony Brook, where he oversaw six schools of health sciences and the hospital, and served as Health Affairs Dean of the School of Medicine.

He has authored or co-authored 24 books and more than 550 published articles; is founding editor of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy; a Master of the American College of Physicians; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences; recipient of a number of honorary doctorates; and a recipient of the Benjamin Rush Award from the American Medical Association, and the Abraham Flexner Award of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

In 2004, Dr. Pellegrino was named to the International Bioethics Committee of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is the only advisory body within the United Nations system to engage in reflection on the ethical implications of advances in life sciences. Throughout his career, he has continued seeing patients in clinical consults, teaching medical students, interns and residents, and doing research. Since his retirement in 2000, Dr. Pellegrino has remained at Georgetown, continuing to write, teach medicine and bioethics, and participate in regular clinical attending services.


Module 6 - Attending to Connections: Care Ethics

Nel Noddings, Ph.D.

Nel Noddings has been Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University since her retirement in 1998. During her 20 years at Stanford she received three awards for teaching excellence and was the Associate and Acting Dean of the School of Education for four years. She was recently Professor of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and John W. Porter Chair in Urban Education at Eastern Michigan University.

Dr. Noddings received a Bachelor degree in mathematics and physical science from Montclair State College in New Jersey, a Master’s degree in mathematics from Rutgers University, and a Ph.D. in education from Stanford University. Before beginning academic work in the fields of philosophy and theory of education, moral education and ethics of care, she spent seventeen years as a grade school teacher and administrator.

Dr. Nodding is past president of the Philosophy of Education Society and the John Dewey Society. She is the author or editor of 14 books, including Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, The Philosophy of Education and The Challenge to Care in Schools, all now in their 2nd edition.


Module 7 -  Ethics in a World of Difference:  Challenges of Human Diversity

Alice Dreger, Ph.D.

Alice Dreger is a Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University in Chicago, and a Guggenheim Fellow. She also served as the project coordinator for publications of the Consortium on Management of Disorders of Sex Development. Her work focuses on using history to improve the medical and social treatment of people born with socially-challenging anatomies, including those born with atypical sex (intersex), conjoinment, dwarfism, and cleft lip. She also studies and writes about the politics of science, medicine, and anatomy, and works with medical professionals, patients, and scientists to try to help make medicine and science more evidence-based and more ethical.

Dr. Dreger spends much time doing public writing and speaking in an attempt to engage audiences outside medical humanities in medical humanities scholarship. She is the author of two books and editor of three, and has written over 25 journal articles and book chapters. Her editorials and essays on science and medicine have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. Dr. Dreger is a regular columnist for the Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum and has appeared on dozens of national and international television and radio programs, including the Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, CNN International, Discovery Health, HBO, and the BBC. For more on Dr. Dreger's work, see her website, www.alicedreger.com.


Module 8 - In Need of a Map! Concepts and Frameworks in Ethical Decision-Making

Patricia Rodney, RN, MSN, Ph.D.

Patricia (Paddy) Rodney is an Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Coordinator with the University of British Columbia (UBC) School of Nursing. She is also a Faculty Associate with the Mary and Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at UBC, a Research Associate with Providence Health Care Ethics Services, and Past-President of the Canadian Bioethics Society. Paddy is currently a member of the ethics committee at BC Women's Hospital in Vancouver, BC, and she is an ethics consultant on the BC Provincial Advisory Panel on Cardiac Health.

Paddy's research and publications focus on end-of-life decision-making and the moral climate of health care delivery. She has a particular interest in moral agency and the difficulties that nurses and other health care professionals experience in the current moral climate of health care delivery. She is engaged in a program of research with academic and practice-based colleagues (using participatory action and qualitative methodologies) aimed at improving the moral climate of health care delivery.

 

Michael McDonald, Ph.D.

Michael McDonald, is the Maurice Young Chair of Applied Ethics at the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia; he was the Centre’s founding Director from 1990-2002. Dr. McDonald received an Honours BA in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and an MA and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. From 1969 to 1990, he was a member of the Philosophy Department at the University of Waterloo.

McDonald’s work is located at the intersection of theory and practice in health care, business and professional life, politics, and other aspects of everyday life. He has written on such topics as the ethics of research involving human subjects, cross-cultural ethics, the rights of communities, professional and corporate responsibility, and the place of applied ethics in contemporary society. He has played an important leadership role in the development of a significant Canadian research capacity in applied ethics.

Michael McDonald has served as an ethicist on the Vancouver General Hospital's Ethics Committee, the Ethics Committee for the British Columbia Transplant Society, British Columbia Cancer Agency's Ethics Council, and the Provincial Advisory Committee on Access to Care. Since 2001 he has served as Chair of the Standing Committee on Ethics for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He has given numerous talks and conferences on health care ethics for health care professionals and managers, ethics committee members and the general public. McDonald’s web page is available at www.ethics.ubc.ca.


Module 9 - Issues at the End of Life: Caring Ethically

Peter A. Singer, MD, MPH, FRCPC

Peter A. Singer is Director of the McLaughlin- Rotman Centre for Global Health and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. His current research focuses on life sciences and the developing world – how technologies make the transition from “lab to village”. Singer's scholarly contributions have also included improvements in quality end of life care, fair priority setting in healthcare organizations, teaching bioethics, pandemic influenza planning, and global biosecurity.

In 2007, Singer received the Michael Smith Prize as Canada’s Health Research of the Year in Population Health and Health Services. He is the Foreign Secretary of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and the US Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Dr. Singer has published over 240 research articles, received over $50 million in research grants, and trained over 70 students. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges for Global Health Initiative, and has advised the UN Secretary General's Office, the Government of Canada, and Pepsico Inc. on issues related to global health.

Singer studied internal medicine at University of Toronto, medical ethics at University of Chicago, public health at Yale University, and management at Harvard Business School. He was previously Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto, Director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, and Chairman of Toronto’s Branksome Hall School.


Starzomski11_000.jpgRosalie Starzomski, RN, MN, PhD

Rosalie Starzomski is a Professor at the University of Victoria School of Nursing, a Clinical Ethicist at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, and a Faculty Associate at the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia. Rosalie's clinical background includes over 25 years as a nephrology/transplant advanced practice nurse. She joined the UVic School of Nursing in 1995 and has taught in both the undergraduate and graduate programs and held a variety of administrative roles. She is a member of several masters and PhD supervisory committees at UVic and other universities. Her research, practice, teaching and publications are focused on health care and nursing ethics, organ donation, transplantation, nephrology, advanced nursing practice, end of life care and influencing change in the health care system.

Rosalie is a member of the UVic School of Nursing Graduate Education Committee. She is a co-editor of the book: Toward a Moral Horizon: Nursing Ethics for Leadership and Practice and is Chairperson of the Acute Care Clinical Ethics Committee in the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. She has been actively involved in the community as a volunteer for many organizations including the Kidney Foundation of Canada, Canuck Place, Vancouver/Richmond Health Board, British Columbia Ministry of Health, the Canadian Nurses Association, Health Canada, the World Council for Renal Care, and the Canadian Council for Donation and Transplantation. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Organ Replacement Register and a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Standing Committee on Ethics. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including an Award of Excellence for Nursing and an Award of Excellence for Nursing Practice from the College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia, the Queen Elizabeth 11 Golden Jubilee Medal for outstanding and exemplary achievement and service to the community and to Canada and, in 2008, the School of Nursing Award of Excellence for Nursing Education.


Module 10 – Allocating Scarce Resources: Who Benefits?

Robert M. Veatch, Ph.D.

Robert Veatch is a Professor of Medical Ethics and the former Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. He also holds appointments as Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Georgetown's Medical Center.

His recent books includeCase Studies in Biomedical Ethics andPatient, Heal Thyself: How the "New Medicine" Puts the Patient in Charge. He is the Senior Editor of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal and a former member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Veatch received a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy from Purdue University (1961), a Masters of Science in Pharmacology from the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco (1962), and a Ph.D. concentrating in medical ethics from Harvard University in 1970. He has received honorary doctorates from Creighton University and Union University. In 2008 he received the Lifetime Achievement award from the American Society of Bioethics and the Humanities.

He was formerly the Senior Associate at the Hastings Center in New York. Dr. Veatch served as an ethics consultant in the preparation of the legal case of Karen Ann Quinlan, the woman whose parents won the right to forgo life-support (1975-76) and testified in the case of Baby K, the anencephalic infant whose mother insisted on the right of access to ventilatory support. He served as President of the Board of Directors of Hospice Care of the District of Columbia, is a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington Regional Transplant Consortium, and former member of the United Network for Organ Sharing Ethics Committee.


Module 11 - Systems and Structures: Ethics in Organizations

Nuala Kenny, O.C., M.D., FRCPC

Nuala Kenny was born in New York and entered the Sisters Charity of Halifax in 1962. She received her BA from Mount Saint Vincent University in l967 and an MD from Dalhousie in l972. She did postgraduate training in pediatrics at Dalhousie University and Tufts-New England Medical Centre. She has received Honorary Doctorates from Mount Saint Vincent (1992), the Atlantic School of Theology (2000), Regis College, Toronto School of Theology (2000) and St. Francis Xavier University (2000). In 1999 was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Nuala Kenny founded the Department of Bioethics at Dalhousie University in 1996 and recently retired as Professor in Dalhousie’s Departments of Bioethics and Pediatrics. She has served on the Committees on Biomedical Ethics of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the Canadian Pediatric Society. She was a founding member of the National Council for Bioethics in Human Research and has served on the Tri-Council Working Group on Revision of Guidelines for Research with Human Subjects and the National Science Advisory Board. Dr. Kenny was Chair of the Values Committee of the Prime Minister's National Forum on Health, past Deputy Minister of Health for Nova Scotia, and is past President of both the Canadian Pediatric Society and the Canadian Bioethics Society. She was a founding member of the Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and also chaired the Working Group on Ethics in the new CIHR.

Dr. Kenny’s areas of research interest in ethics include: physician ethics, ethics education for physicians with particular attention to role-modeling, ethics and health policy at all levels, pediatric ethics and end of life care. In 2002, she completed her first book, What Good is Health Care? Reflections on the Canadian Experience.


csimpson.jpgChristy Simpson, PhD

Christy Simpson is an associate professor in the Department of Bioethics at Dalhousie University. She is the coordinator for the ethics-based collaborations between the Department, Capital Health and the IWK Health Centre, as well as the newly formed Nova Scotia Health Ethics Network. Her primary responsibilities include ethics education and capacity-building, policy development and review, and support for clinical and organizational ethics consultations.

Christy completed her doctorate in philosophy, specializing in bioethics, at the Department of Philosophy at Dalhousie University in 2001. During her doctoral studies, Christy also undertook two clinical practicums at local health care facilities, which stimulated her interest in the role of hope in health care. Her research in this area continued during a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta (2000-2002) and is still strong today, in conjunction with health care ethics. Christy’s research interests also include rural bioethics and organizational ethics.


Module 12 - Clinical Ethics Consultation: Providing Support

Michael M. Burgess, Ph.D.

Michael Burgess is Principal of the University of British Columbia’s College for Interdisciplinary Studies. He is currently on leave as Professor and Chair in Biomedical Ethics at UBC’s Centre for Applied Ethics and Department of Medical Genetics.

Burgess received a BA in philosophy and religion from Spring Arbor College in Michigan, and an MA and Ph.D. in philosophy, with a specialization in medical ethics, from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He was formerly an Associate Professor of Medical Bioethics in the Faculty of Medicine and Humanities Institute at the University of Calgary.

He is primarily interested in identifying neglected or novel perspectives on issues of culture, genetics and genomics to assure that the theoretical approaches and recommendations engage with poorly understood or disenfranchised perspectives. He spent a sabbatical year in 2003-2004 building collaborative relationships in the area of public consultation related to genomics and biotechnology, spending time in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. The focus of his interdisciplinary collaboration is to engage various “publics” in dialogue about the role of genomics and biotechnology in society, to inform policy and to sustain continued discussion on important ethical issues. The primary topics have been salmon genomics and aquaculture and biobanking.


Jiwani.jpgBashir Jiwani, Ph.D.

Bashir Jiwani is Ethicist and Director, Fraser Health Ethics Services in British Columbia where his role involves clinical ethics consultation, ethics-based organizational policy analysis, ethics infrastructure development and support, and ongoing ethics education and programming. Previously, Bashir served as Ethicist and Leader of the Ethics Network for Providence Health Care in Vancouver and Northern Alberta Coordinator at the Provincial Health Ethics Network. Bashir has conducted workshops and presentations across the country on issues in health ethics for academic audiences and for health care administrators, providers, patients and the lay public. He has been involved with teaching ethics to medical students at both the University of Alberta and University of British Columbia.

Bashir's academic background includes a Master's degree in Applied Ethics, specializing in Bioethics, from the University of British Columbia and a PhD from the University of Alberta’s Public Health Sciences Department. His research interests include ethics and public health policy, health care resource allocation, ethics resources in both clinical and organizational ethics, ethical decision-making, and bioethics in a multicultural context. He serves on the Executive of the Canadian Bioethics Society and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC's Ethical Standards and Conduct Review Committee.