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Health Care Ethics USA
I am delighted to initiate with this issue the electronic version of Health Care Ethics USA. The printed version of this quarterly journal had a national distribution, including its dissemination via our two partners in health care, Ascension Health and Catholic Health Initiatives. We hope that you find our electronic version of the journal to be more practical for your multiple uses in ethics committees etc. There were two main reasons for the Center to move from a printed version to an electronic version of the journal. Most importantly, in the e-culture of modern health care we would like the journal to be available as widely as possible with a flexibility of use that the printed version could not offer. The second reason was fiscal stewardship - the printing costs for the journal have escalated so that the only way of continuing would be to more than triple the annual subscription. Instead, we can retain the current subscription rate and provide a more extensive service to the ministry via the electronic distribution of the journal. A letter has been sent to each subscriber explaining how to access the journal electronically. So welcome aboard to this new format of our e-journal! Please let us know what you think; any suggestions to improve the format will be most welcome. Another new item for your attention - in November we offer for the first time our newly designed three-day Institute on "Medical Ethics in Catholic Health Care: Living Our Values in the Clinical Environment" (November 9-11). At the Institute we will address many front-burner issues including the patient bill of rights, medical errors, internet medicine, genetics and transplants (including the controversial issue of embryonic stem cell research) and issues on death and dying. At the end of this e-journal you will find further information with a hot link to our web page for the full schedule, registration, etc. As usual, to accommodate the hectic pace that drives the daily work of health care, participants are welcome to join us for one day, two days, or three days as schedules permit. We are looking forward to a very exciting new Institute and I encourage you to spread the word to colleagues who may be interested in participating. This Fall semester we are very fortunate to have a prominent visiting scholar at the Center who brings an immense amount of experience in Catholic health care - Sister Marie Damian Glatt, who was President from 1992 until 1999 of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health Services Corporation based in Leavenworth Kansas. She offers us a wonderful opportunity to learn from the valuable insights she has gained as President of this large health system that stretches from the mid-west to the west coast. Sister Marie Damian has an office with us that provides her easy access to our libraries and research databases. We welcome her each day to our community of scholars, faculty and students alike, at the Center. By providing an academic haven from the hectic world she has known for many years we hope that she will contribute substantively to the development of the Center's new initiative in organizational ethics in health care. Moreover, she will be teaching our students in our academic colloquium series that we host each semester. Her topic for these colloquia is, "Governance and Sponsorship in Catholic Health Care". If anyone in the region is interested in participating in this series please contact me for the schedule. As usual, this issue has an essay on organizational ethics, on medical ethics, and on a foundational issue in health care. To begin, I present an essay on the ethical implications of embryonic stem cell research, discussing the topic from the perspective of organizational ethics. I discuss the impact of new stem cell therapies that are derived from human embryos destroyed in the process. The second essay addresses an important topic of continuing interest in medical ethics - transplants. In this essay Jim DuBois discusses ethical questions that arise from recent developments in "non-heart-beating donation". The last essay by Jill Ciesla considers a foundational issue in health care by discussing physician assisted suicide from the perspective of patient authorization and consent. I hope you enjoy these essays and I look forward to hearing from you about the new e-journal format of Health Care Ethics USA. Gerard Magill, Ph.D. Index | Next: Ethical Implications Of Embryonic Stem Cell Research |
From the Director... |
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