The central questions being addressed in each project are listed below. A detailed description of the project, plus links and material related to these topic areas, can be accessed by clicking on the project theme listed below.
Join us! How to participate in our scholarship. (Project description coming soon! Thank you for your patience.)
How to make donation fair and just for egg donors? How to distribute gamete lines to researchers so research is just? How to do clinical trials justly? How to distribute or trade fairly when therapies are discovered and verified? Are women really free moral agents? Can the state compel altruism? What about free markets? How to avoid coercion? (Hard coercion, as in prostitution (cash for use of body), and soft coercion, as in family pressure or desperation (love/approval for use of body).)
(Project description coming soon! Thank you for your patience.)
(Project description coming soon! Thank you for your patience.)
How does society decide what is just? In a world of scarcity, how ought a society to justly distribute scare goods and services? In light of particular and poignant crisis of health care, what would be the language of such choices? How can the state be accountable for justice? How can an international community reflect justice?
(Project description coming soon! Thank you for your patience.)
The Ethical, Legal, and Societal implications (ELSI) of Genomic Research are both complex and urgent. At Northwestern University we will explore one of the most salient and contended issues in depth, that of justice and allocation. We will research this issue in all its many manifestations, from the first choices at the bench to the framing of clinical trials at the bedside to the final investment strategies of the boardroom. We use the combined interdisciplinary research methods of three University Research Centers—the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society at Northwestern University, the Center for Biotechnology at the Kellogg School of Management, and the Center for Genetic Medicine at Feinberg School of Medicine—converged into one Center of Excellence in ELSI Research. The University has enthusiastically committed the resources of the Medical, Management, and Arts and Sciences Colleges to a robust collaboration that will create our CEER—The Center on Values, Ethics, and Religion in Genomics and Economics (ConVERGE). We will explore the questions of justice in the complex process of genomic research and application. Our Center is unique because it aims at an in-depth analysis of ELSI issues through two distinctive methodological lenses: that of International Religious Scholarship (with partners at Cambridge University) and that of Experimental Economics (with partners at MIT). We will look in detail at both marketplace arguments and intellectual property rights as well as religious and moral appeals for justice and observe their effect on incentives, effectiveness, and cumulativeness of genomic knowledge, research, and products. We will research how concerns for fairness to all our citizens translate into a more just citizenship—a citizenship for a genomic age, and a free and responsible market—a socially responsible economic framework for a genomic age. Our questions will be framed broadly around three intellectual methods, scholarships, and sensibilities, for such a conversation cannot be created in one discipline. Such a conversation will be critical if the theories of molecular biology are to be translated into public health and population based genomic interventions, global market realities, and the human needs of democratic, pluralistic societies. We will explore how disclosure, incentives, and social solidarity all play roles in the larger question of justice. We will apply innovative, flexible, expert, interdisciplinary collaborative efforts to the emerging issues of justice and seek to train a new generation of scientists and ELSI scholars from diverse backgrounds, academic training, and ethnicities: translational genomic research that will lead to real gains in public health and toward transformative advances in global social and economic design that will sustain these gains.
Please see the
For more information on the basic nanoscience research projects at Northwestern University, please see the International Institute for Nanotechnology's website.
How can we set in place a fair and just system of access to the good ends of medicine using a fair and just process that protects donors and recipients and also aims for fair and just goals for humanity?
Please see the Chicago Transplant Ethics Consortium for details.
Are there reasons in principle why performing the basic research should be impermissible? What contextual factors should be taken into account and do any of these prevent the development and use of the research? What purposes, techniques, or applications would be permissible and under what circumstances? What procedures and structures, involving what policies, should be used to decide on appropriate techniques and uses? (AAAS)
What is the moral status of the fetus? What is natural? Is nature fixed? Is it normative? If I have a duty to heal the suffering other, then how should I judge things or persons that block that duty or moral action? Is it warranted to block the moral action of healing to avoid the destruction of a blastocyst?
(Project description coming soon! Thank you for your patience.)
Just the beginning As the scientific body of knowledge grows and technology emerges at an increasing pace, it is crucial that the academic community and public respond to and guide this process. As the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society seeks to expand its research projects to encompass emerging research agendas and technologies, we need to bring the powerful, critical, and thoughtful intellectual capacities of scholars to our Center in the form of faculty, fellows and students. We also strongly encourage the engagement of the community in these research projects, in asking and exploring questions in bioethics. In you are interested in participating in a project, please contact us at bioethics@northwestern.edu with your proposed topic(s) of interest. Also, check out our News and Events webpage to find out about conversations in bioethics that are taking place locally, nationally, and internationally: participate! |
