UW, Department of Bioethics & Humanities

Over one year ago, the Washington Death with Dignity Act went into effect. Faculty in the Department of Bioethics & Humanities have been involved in educational efforts to prepare clinicians for requests under the new law.
Click here for a fact sheet summarizing clinician responsibilities under the Act and a reading list for further information. Click here for an updated powerpoint presentation summarizing the Washington law, the experience in Oregon, and data from a study conducted by Dr. Helene Starks and colleagues examining the experience from patient and family view points.

Congratulations to our department members Sue Trinidad, Malia Fullerton, and Wylie Burke on the publication of their article in the journal Science. It is highlighted in the January 20th edition of UW Today. Written by UW and Group Health bioethicists, the article suggest ways for scientists and study volunteers to build trusting relationships.

Welcome to our new Affiliate Professor,
Dr. Bert Boyer from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Director for the Center for Alaska Native Health Research (CANHR). Dr. Boyer is researching the interaction between genetic and environmental risk and protective factors for obesity and diabetes in Yup'ik Eskimos. He is dual Principal Investigator with Dr. Wylie Burke, Bioethics & Humanities Department Chair, on a NIH funded grant titled "Ethics of dissemination: Communicating with participants about genetic research".

Friday,
7 p.m.
UW Law School, Room 138
Wine & Cheese Reception 6 p.m., Brotman Atrium, UW Law School

A proposed law in Florida would make it illegal for pediatricians to discuss firearm ownership with the families of their patients, subjecting pediatricians who talk about guns with children's parents to a felony conviction and a five million dollar fine or up to five years in prison. UW School of Law professor Dr. Patricia Kuszler, MD, JD will talk about conscience clauses in medical practice, social justice, and propose a set of best practices for pediatric care and firearm ownership.

For more information contact Rev. Matthew Smith, reverendmattsmith@gmail.com or
(206) 524-2322 x. 3100

Professor Kuszler is the Charles I. Stone Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Law, Science and Global Health. She is the Principal Investigator of the International Biomedical Research Ethics Fellowship Grant and Co-Primary Investigator of the Center for Genomics and Healthcare Equality funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute. In addition to her law faculty appointment, Professor Kuszler is an Adjunct Professor in the UW School of Medicine (Department of Bioethics and Humanities) and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Public Health (Department of Health Services).

The Cooperating Ministries in Higher Education (CMHE) at the University of Washington sponsors this annual lectureship to honor Dr. McCormick for the role he has played in fostering the teaching of medical ethics over the past 32 years. They offer this public lectureship to encourage dialogue between religion and science by engaging members of both the academic community and members of various faith communities.

Thank you to all our wonderful BRI Discussion Group Leaders from the 2010 series. Thanks to these dedicated volunteers, we held 74 discussion groups this past summer as part of the responsible conduct of research BRI training.

Gino Gianola, Neil Nathanson, Andrea Civan, Jessica DeBord, Buddy Ratner, Kristie Bjornson, Miriam Treggiari, Kathryn Yorkston, David Kimelman, Peter Milgrom, Karin Bornfeldt, Jeff Munson, Wes Van Voorhis, Ram Samudrala, Deepak Sharma, Helen Lee, Horacio de la Iglasia, Anna Wald, Annemarie Relyea-Chew, Paul Nghiem, Nick Anderson, Ben Wilfond, Mitzi Murray, Janet Eary, Dave Eaton, Arian Kaci, David Raible, Michael Lee, Emily White, Jonna Clark, Nancy Jecker, Anna Mastroianni, Michael Shadlin, Sue Trinidad, Helene Starks.

The School of Medicine Responsible Conduct of Research Training program for NIH funded trainees for 2010 closed on October 31st.
Please visit the BRI website to view your attendance.

The Dean’s office of the School of Medicine is proud to recognize people who represent the values of excellent service and commitment to the School of Medicine’s mission. Dr. Kelly Edwards, Associate Professor in Bioethics & Humanities has been named a recipient. Recipients of the Service Excellence Award have demonstrated their dedication to the mission through effective mentoring, inspiring leadership and high standards of exemplary service to others.

The department welcomes our new Affliate Assistant Professor, Dr. Stephen D. King. He is the Director of Chaplaincy at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and collaborates with our department in teaching and research activities.

Welcome to our new Adjunct Assistant Professor, Dr. Stephanie Cooper . She is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine in the University of Washington School of Medicine.

B&H congratulates Helene Starks, PhD MPH on her promotion to Associate Professor of Bioethics. Helene also has an Adjunct Associate Professor appointment in Health Services and serves as Associate Director of Graduate Studies for the department. Helene can be reached at tigiba@u.washington.edu

The department congratulates Ken Thummel, chair and professor of pharmaceutics, and Wylie Burke, chair and professor of bioethics and humanities, and colleagues, on receipt of a five-year, $10 million grant from the NIH’s Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN) to create a Northwest-Alaska center to study pharmacogenomics in rural and underserved populations. Click here for further details.

Congratulations to Associate Professor Tom Gallagher on his latest grant award, a demonstration project entitled Communication to Prevent and Respond to Medical Injuries: WA State Collaborative. For details, please see the June 25th edition of UW Medicine Online News. Dr. Gallagher also co-authored a recent article in NEJM titled Malpractice Reform– Opportunities for leadership by health care institutions and liability insurers.

A team of Group Health Research Institute and UW investigators report “Glad You Asked” appears in the September 2010 Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. The team found that people want to be informed and asked for consent before deciding whether to let researchers share their genetic information in a federal database. The team lead author and senior research associate at Group Health Research Institute is Evette Ludman and the UW co-authors include Wylie Burke, professor and chair of the Department of Bioethics & Humanities and affiliate investigator at Group Health Research Institute; Gail Jarvik, professor of medicine and head of the Division of Medical Genetics; Stephanie M. Fullerton, assistant professor of bioethics and humanities, and Susan Brown Trinidad, research scientist in bioethics and humanities.

Drs. Kelly Edwards, Stephanie Cooper and Thomas Robey each contributed
articles to the June 2010 issue of the AMA's ethics journal, Virtual Mentor, which was titled "Time and Resource Constraints in the
Emergency Department." Read the UW-authored pieces and other commentaries on ethics topics from emergency medicine at the VM website.

Dr. James C. Whorton is featured in the April 26th edition of UWeek! His recently published book "The Arsenic Century", traces criminal and environmental poisoning in Victorian Britain.