Type | Research & Policy Institute |
---|---|
Established | December 2003 |
Dean | John L. Carroll |
Academic staff | David M. Smolin, director |
Students | Kyle Newchek |
Location | , , United States |
Publications | The Cumberland Law Review - co-publisher |
Affiliations | Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Cumberland Law Review. |
Website | cumberland |
The Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics is a bioethics, biotechnology, and biotechnology law research center of Cumberland School of Law located on the Samford University campus in Birmingham, Alabama. [1] It is one of the few research centers of its kind at a United States law school, and, in conjunction with the Cumberland Law Review , the Center publishes an annual journal of scholarly works, which circulates in the United States and foreign countries. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
The center was founded in December 2003 by David M. Smolin, who serves as its director. [7]
The Center focuses its research and conferences on the ethical and legal implications of biotechnology and biotechnology law, rather than pursuing a general emphasis on the subject of bioethics or bioethics law like many other academic research centers. Its location within Birmingham places it in an emerging center for biotechnology research and commerce. [3] Of primary importance for the Center, however, is generating law review articles on emerging biotechnology issues, which is often done as part of a conference speakers' presentation.
Research focuses on understanding current bioethical issues related to biotechnology and biotechnology law, as well as how different ideologies answer, or if they even can answer, different bioethical issues. The Center's approach to bioethical research attempts to understand "multiple perspectives" and evaluate the validity of each. [8]
The Center has sponsored five conferences that have dealt with the United States health care system, research on children, biofuels, genetically modified foods, and whether the field of bioethics and its methodology can provide actual answers to ethical questions or merely the opinions of ethicists.
The center hosts an annual Symposium at which experts give presentations on bioethical issues. The papers are published in the Cumberland Law Review . The symposia attempt to offer a broad range of views and seek factual, persuasive solutions to problems, rather than to generate opinionated debates.
Speakers have included United States Congressman Artur Davis, atmospheric scientist John Christy, medical ethics expert Gregory Pence, Vermont Law School's environmental center director Michael Dworkin, John Nyman, Larry Palmer, and law professors, entrepreneurs and other experts. Speakers often publish a paper in the Cumberland Law Review that develops the theme of their presentation. Many of the articles are available online.
The following are a selection of articles generated by the Center, which are available on-line. For a complete list refer to the Cumberland Law Review:
This Conference is being held on February 26, 2010 at Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama to discuss the causes and socio-economic impact of "missing girls" in China and India. "In China, approximately ten percent of females have disappeared from the population at birth in last generation alone. Similarly, about five percent of female are "missing" from India's population. Collectively, this indicates a loss of tens of millions of Chinese and Indian females which creates significant socioeconomic complications. The sex-ratio imbalances in China and India have grown worse despite successful economic development and pressures toward cultural modernization. Scholarship on "the missing girls" of China and India has been increasingly successful in documenting and identifying some of the most direct causes. The purpose of this symposium is to gather and urge a group of the leading scholars to discuss remedies to the problem of missing girls." [19]
This Conference was hosted on February 27, 2009 and its stated purpose was that: "The public in the United States and throughout much of the world has become keenly aware of the limitations of continued reliance on petroleum-based fuels. Concerns over diminishing supplies, growing demand, price instabilities, environmental impacts, international competition for limited resources, energy security, and the costs of foreign involvement necessitated by our “addiction to oil” have created an imperative toward renewable energy. Yet, some view the United States’ first major venture into renewable fuels, corn-based ethanol, as a failure that has contributed to higher food prices and brings little overall environmental or supply gain. Political and popular rhetoric suggests that a technological fix, in forms such as second-generation biofuels, fuel cells, electric cars, or a hydrogen economy are just around the corner, and yet most estimates posit that petroleum based fuels will predominate for at least several more decades. President Barack Obama has promised a new and different energy policy. This conference, taking place a little more than month into the new administration, will look at the possibilities for transportation energy policy both for the United States and other nations. Upon examination, government has a limited set of tools it can use to promote a transition to renewable energy and promote energy conservation/efficiency. Options include subsidies or tax credits for renewable energy, taxing carbon-based energy, funding research, promoting/funding/designing for mass transit, renewable fuel standards, CAFÉ-fuel efficiency standards, and mandating that energy efficient/alternative energy cars be built in exchange for financial help for the car industry. These issues of supply, demand, price, security, nationalism, and environment occur within an interdependent world. Hence, this conference will look beyond the United States to transportation energy policy throughout the world." [20]
The speakers for this event were: [21]
This Conference was hosted on Thursday February 22, 2007 at Cumberland School of Law. The keynote speaker of the Conference was United States Representative Artur Davis (D) who spoke about the need for change in the current health care delivery system in the United States. [24] His speech was delivered in part as a presentation of the Thurgood Marshall Lecture series sponsored by the Black Law Students Association at Cumberland. [25] [26]
The sponsors for the Symposium included the Center for Biotechnology, Law, and Ethics, Cumberland Law School, Samford University, the Cumberland Law Review, and Cumberland Law School's Chapter of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA)
The five panels were:
This Conference was hosted on Monday, February 10, 2006 at Cumberland School of Law. [28] The speakers and publications analyzed global energy policy, climate change and the role of biofuels as a supplement to the petroleum-based economy in both the utility and transportation sectors. Host professor David Smolin stated that "[r]aising awareness of what's happening with traditional and alternative energy sources can help us as a society make more informed choices." [1] [29]
It included six panels and two question and answer sessions. The panels were:
The participants were:
The Brochure for the Conference may be viewed at: [30]
This Conference was hosted on Monday, March 14, 2005 at Cumberland School of Law and analyzed how secular and religious methodologies answered the previously mentioned bioethical dilemmas. The impetus for the Conference sprang from three common criticisms of the field of Bioethics that "1) basic principles of bioethics are vague and indeterminate, and provide no real answers to bioethics dilemmas...2) there is no real expertise in the field but merely the subjective answers of individual bioethicists and...3) that the mainstream bioethics field has some of the "wrong" answers to basic bioethical dilemmas..."
The Conference was sponsored by Cumberland School of Law's Center for Bioetechnology, Law and Ethics, the Cumberland Law Review and Cumberland School of Law.
It included three panels:
The participants were:
This Conference was hosted on Monday, March 31, 2004 at the Bradley Lecure Center, Children's Harbor Building of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Sponsors were Cumberland Law School's Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics, the Cumberland Law Review and the Center for Ethics & Values in the Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Conference analyzed the impact of the production and use of genetically modified foods.
It included six panels:
The participants were:
This conference was hosted on March 21, 2003 by the Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics, the Center for Ethics and Values in the Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Alabama School of Medicine Division of Continuing Medical Education.
The Conference analyzed the ethical implications of research on children. There were four panels at the conference:
The Children's research brochure may be viewed at: [6]
The following is a list of fellows who have served the Center: [32]
Lee Smolin is an American theoretical physicist, a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a member of the graduate faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto. Smolin's 2006 book The Trouble with Physics criticized string theory as a viable scientific theory. He has made contributions to quantum gravity theory, in particular the approach known as loop quantum gravity. He advocates that the two primary approaches to quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity and string theory, can be reconciled as different aspects of the same underlying theory. He also advocates an alternative view on space and time he calls temporal naturalism. His research interests also include cosmology, elementary particle theory, the foundations of quantum mechanics, and theoretical biology.
Samford University is a private Baptist university in Homewood, Alabama. It was founded in 1841 as Howard College by Baptists. Samford University describes itself as the 87th oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. The university enrolls 5,683 students from 47 states, 2 U.S. territories, and 19 countries.
Cumberland School of Law is an ABA-accredited law school at Samford University in Homewood, Alabama, United States. It was founded in 1847 at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee and is the 11th oldest law school in the United States. The school has more than 11,000 graduates, and its alumni include two United States Supreme Court Justices, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Cordell Hull, "the father of the United Nations", over 50 U.S. representatives, and numerous senators, governors, and judges.
Arthur L. Caplan is an American ethicist and professor of bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine.
The New Atlantis is a journal founded by the social conservative advocacy group the Ethics and Public Policy Center. However, The New Atlantis is a "nonpartisan publication. Indeed, the subjects addressed in our pages often cut across existing political lines, forcing liberals and conservatives, progressives and libertarians, to revisit their guiding principles." In January 2018, it became independent of EPPC; it is now published by the Center for the Study of Technology and Society. The journal covers topics about the social, ethical, political, and policy dimensions of modern science and technology. The New Atlantis is a public journal of ideas rather than an academic journal, in which articles are peer reviewed. The journal is published in Washington, D.C. by the Center for the Study of Technology and Society. It is edited by Ari Schulman, having previously been edited by co-founders Eric Cohen and Adam Keiper. Contributing editors include Diana Schaub, Wilfred M. McClay, Alan Jacobs and Robert Zubrin.
Gregory Stock is an American biophysicist, best-selling author, biotech entrepreneur, and the former director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA’s School of Medicine. His interests lie in the scientific and evolutionary as well as ethical, social and political implications of today's revolutions in the life sciences and in information technology and computers.
The Hastings Center is an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute and think tank based in Garrison, New York. It was instrumental in establishing the field of bioethics and is among the most prestigious bioethics and health policy institutes in the world.
David Mark Smolin is a professor of law at Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama where he is the Harwell G. Davis Chair in Constitutional Law, director for The Center for Children, Law, and Ethics, former director of the Center for Biotechnology, Law, and Ethics, and faculty advisor for the Law, Science and Technology Society.
Gregory E. Pence is an American philosopher.
The Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future (IBHF) is an affiliate of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and is housed at IIT's Chicago-Kent College of Law. The IBHF was founded in 2004 by Lori Andrews, J.D., and Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Ph.D., to discuss and analyze the ethical, legal, and social implications of biotechnologies.
John Carson Lennox is a Northern Irish mathematician, bioethicist, Christian nationalist, and Christian apologist. He has written many books on religion, ethics, the relationship between science and faith, and has had public debates with atheists including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is a UK-based independent charitable body, which examines and reports on bioethical issues raised by new advances in biological and medical research. Established in 1991, the Council is funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The Council has been described by the media as a 'leading ethics watchdog', which 'never shrinks from the unthinkable'.
Karon Lynn Owen Bowdre is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Cam Ward is an American politician who served as a Republican member of the Alabama Senate, representing District 14 from 2010 to 2020. He previously represented District 49 of the Alabama House of Representatives from 2002 to 2010.
The Center for Children, Law, and Ethics is a research center at Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama, directed by the internationally recognized legal scholar David Smolin. It combines the interest and involvement of law students, local, national and international advisers, to facilitate the production of scholarship and advice in the field of children's issues.
Christopher Tarver Robertson is a specialist in health law working at the intersection of law, philosophy and science. His research explores how the law affects decision making in domains of scientific uncertainty and misaligned incentives, which he calls "institutional epistemology." Robertson is professor, N. Neal Pike Scholar, and Associate Dean at Boston University. He is affiliated faculty with the Petrie Flom Center for Health Care Policy, Bioethics and Biotechnology at Harvard Law School. His work includes tort law, bioethics, the First Amendment, and corruption in healthcare and politics. His legal practice has focused on complex litigation involving medical and scientific disputes.
David Magnus is the Thomas A. Raffin Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Ethics and professor of pediatrics at Stanford University. He is also the director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and the co-chair of the Ethics Committee at Stanford Hospital.
John F. Kilner is a bioethicist who held the Franklin and Dorothy Forman endowed chair in ethics and theology at Trinity International University, where he was also Professor of Bioethics and Contemporary Culture and Director of Bioethics Degree Programs. He is a Senior Fellow at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (CBHD) in Deerfield, Illinois, where he served as Founding Director until Fall 2005.
Vardit Ravitsky is a bioethicist, researcher, and author. She is a full professor at the University of Montreal and a senior lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is immediate-past president and current vice-president of the International Association of Bioethics, and the director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics. She is a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, where she Chaired the COVID-19 Impact Committee. She is also Fellow of The Hastings Center and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
Jessica Wilen Berg is an American attorney and specialist in Public Health (MPH), currently serving as co-Dean at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, the first female co-Dean or Dean in the law school's 129-year history. She is also Tom J.E. and Bette Lou Walker Professor of Law,Professor in the Departments of Bioethics, and of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at the CWRU School of Medicine. She is a reference book author in the area of informed consent. Her scholarly opinion is often reported by institutions and media on ethical aspects iof innovative biomedical procedures.
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