Effy Vayena | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 1972 [1] |
| Alma mater | University of Minnesota |
| Scientific career | |
| Thesis | Cancer detectors : an international history of the pap test and cervical cancer screening, 1928-1970 (1999) |
| Doctoral advisor | John Eyler |
Eftychia ("Effy") Vayena (born 1972) is a Greek and Swiss bioethicist. Since 2017 she has held the position of chair of bioethics at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, ETH Zurich. She is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences.
Vayena was born in Greece [1] and grew up on the island of Lefkada. [2] [3] Vayena received a B.A. in history from the University of Athens, Greece and an M.Sc. in history of science, technology & medicine from Imperial College, University of London. Her master's research was on In vitro fertilisation where she examined the impact of new developments and the ethical questions. [3] She then moved to the United States where she earned a Ph.D. in the social history of medicine from the University of Minnesota. [3]
After her doctoral work, Vayena joined the World Health Organization (WHO) where she worked from 2000 until 2007. [1] While there she led some of the organisation's work on the ethics of reproductive technologies. [4] [5] She returned to academia, joining the University of Zurich where she received her Habilitation in Bioethics and Health Policy. In 2015 she received a Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship Award and became assistant professor of health policy at the University of Zurich. [2] IN 2017 she moved to ETH Zurich [3] where she was later appointed professor of bioethics at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, holding the first Chair of Bioethics of that Institution. [6] She is a Visiting Lecturer at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, [6] where she was previously a Fellow. [7] In 2024 she gave the inaugural Gay Lecture "Bioethics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Navigating Opportunities, Challenges and Responsibilities" at the Harvard Medical School Centre for Bioethics. [8]
Vayena is a specialist in the area of digital health ethics, health data governance, personalised medicine ethics, research ethics, ethics of genomics, health data governance and digital bioethics. She had focused on the normative aspects of independent oversight as well as the procedural principles that should guide independent oversight for digital health technologies. [9] She chaired the WHO expert group that issued the “Ethical Considerations to guide the use of digital proximity tracking technologies for COVID-19 contact tracing” and in this role she considered the role of contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic. [10]
She is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences. [6] [3]
Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.
Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. Medical ethics is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. These values include the respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. Such tenets may allow doctors, care providers, and families to create a treatment plan and work towards the same common goal. These four values are not ranked in order of importance or relevance and they all encompass values pertaining to medical ethics. However, a conflict may arise leading to the need for hierarchy in an ethical system, such that some moral elements overrule others with the purpose of applying the best moral judgement to a difficult medical situation. Medical ethics is particularly relevant in decisions regarding involuntary treatment and involuntary commitment.
New eugenics, also known as liberal eugenics, advocates enhancing human characteristics and capacities through the use of reproductive technology and human genetic engineering. Those who advocate new eugenics generally think selecting or altering embryos should be left to the preferences of parents, rather than forbidden. "New" eugenics purports to distinguish itself from the forms of eugenics practiced and advocated in the 20th century, which fell into disrepute after World War II.
A designer baby is a baby whose genetic makeup has been selected or altered, often to exclude a particular gene or to remove genes associated with disease. This process usually involves analysing a wide range of human embryos to identify genes associated with particular diseases and characteristics, and selecting embryos that have the desired genetic makeup; a process known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Screening for single genes is commonly practiced, and polygenic screening is offered by a few companies. Other methods by which a baby's genetic information can be altered involve directly editing the genome before birth, which is not routinely performed and only one instance of this is known to have occurred as of 2019, where Chinese twins Lulu and Nana were edited as embryos, causing widespread criticism.
In public health, contact tracing is the process of identifying people who may have been exposed to an infected person ("contacts") and subsequent collection of further data to assess transmission. By tracing the contacts of infected individuals, testing them for infection, and isolating or treating the infected, this public health tool aims to reduce infections in the population. In addition to infection control, contact tracing serves as a means to identify high-risk and medically vulnerable populations who might be exposed to infection and facilitate appropriate medical care. In doing so, public health officials utilize contact tracing to conduct disease surveillance and prevent outbreaks. In cases of diseases of uncertain infectious potential, contact tracing is also sometimes performed to learn about disease characteristics, including infectiousness. Contact tracing is not always the most efficient method of addressing infectious disease. In areas of high disease prevalence, screening or focused testing may be more cost-effective.
Donal O'Mathuna is an associate professor within the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University.
Tia Powell is an American psychiatrist and bioethicist. She is Director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Bioethics and of the Einstein Cardozo Master of Science in Bioethics Program, as well as a Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Clinical Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx, New York. She holds the Trachtenberg Chair in Bioethics and is Professor of Epidemiology, Division of Bioethics, and Psychiatry. She was director of Clinical Ethics at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City from 1992-1998, and executive director of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law from 2004-2008.
I. Glenn Cohen is a Canadian legal scholar and professor at Harvard Law School. He is also the director of Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.
Mildred Z. Solomon is an American bioethics researcher.
Françoise Elvina BaylisFISC is a Canadian bioethicist whose work is at the intersection of applied ethics, health policy, and practice. The focus of her research is on issues of women's health and assisted reproductive technologies, but her research and publication record also extend to such topics as research involving humans, gene editing, novel genetic technologies, public health, the role of bioethics consultants, and neuroethics. Baylis' interest in the impact of bioethics on health and public policy as well as her commitment to citizen engagement]and participatory democracy sees her engage with print, radio, television, and other online publications.
Christine I. Mitchell is an American filmmaker and bioethicist and until her retirement in September 2022, the executive director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School (HMS).
The He Jiankui genome editing incident is a scientific and bioethical controversy concerning the use of genome editing following its first use on humans by Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who edited the genomes of human embryos in 2018. He became widely known on 26 November 2018 after he announced that he had created the first human genetically edited babies. He was listed in Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2019. The affair led to ethical and legal controversies, resulting in the indictment of He and two of his collaborators, Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou. He eventually received widespread international condemnation.
Tanja Stadler is a mathematician and professor of computational evolution at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. She’s the current president of the Swiss Scientific Advisory Panel COVID-19 and Vize-Chair of the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zürich.
Lisa Campo-Engelstein is an American bioethicist and fertility/contraceptive researcher. She currently works at the University of Texas Medical Branch as the Harris L. Kempner Chair in the Humanities in Medicine Professor, the Director of the Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities, and an Associate Professor in Preventive Medicine and Population Health. She is also a feminist bioethicist specializing in reproductive ethics and sexual ethics. She has been recognized in the BBC's list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2019.
Nir Eyal is a bioethicist and Henry Rutgers Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Center for Population–Level Bioethics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He was formerly a bioethicist in the Department of Global Health and Population of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine of the Harvard Medical School. He has long worked closely with Harvard bioethicist Daniel Wikler. Eyal's current visibility concerns his role in studying the ethics of human challenge trials in HIV, malaria, and coronavirus vaccine development. He has also written on 'bystander risks' during pandemics and infectious diseases and contract tracing during ebola.
Cansu Canca is a moral and political philosopher, with a Ph.D. specializing in applied ethics, and founder and director of AI Ethics Lab. Formerly, she was a bioethicist at the University of Hong Kong, and an ethics researcher at Harvard Law School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, National University of Singapore, Osaka University, and the World Health Organization.
Vardit Ravitsky, an Israeli-Canadian, is a bioethicist, researcher, and author. She is president and CEO of The Hastings Center, a senior lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and past president of the International Association of Bioethics. She is a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, where she chaired the COVID-19 Impact Committee. She is also a Fellow of The Hastings Center and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Previously, she was a full professor at the University of Montreal, and director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics.
Jean-Pierre Hubaux is a Swiss-Belgian computer scientist specialised in security and privacy. He is a professor of computer science at EPFL and is the head of the Laboratory for Data Security at EPFL's School of Computer and Communication Sciences.
Vasantha Muthuswamy was an Indian physician and bioethicist, head of the Indian Council of Medical Research's Division of Basic Medical Sciences, Traditional Medicine, and Bioethics, and the Division of Reproductive Health and Nutrition, from 1990 to 2008. She was a leader in establishing, revising, and promoting ethical guidelines for medical research in India. She participated in international organizations and projects focused on bioethics, and was a noted critic of ethics dumping.
Lynley Carol Anderson is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in bioethics in health care education and sports and sports healthcare provision.
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