John and Marsha Ryan Bioethicist in Residence | Simmons Law School | SIU

John and Marsha Ryan Bioethicist in Residence

Ryan Bioethicist in Residence

The John and Marsha Ryan Bioethicist in Residence was established in 2006 to fund an annual residence and lecture by a law and/or medicine ethics scholar at the Simmons Law School and School of Medicine at Southern Illinois University.

Each year, a leading bioethics scholar will present a public lecture on his or her scholarship, as it relates to law and medicine, at the law school in Carbondale and will present to students and faculty at the medical school in Springfield.  The bioethics scholar will also provide a presentation to the joint bioethics committees at Southern Illinois Healthcare.

"When Seriously Ill Patients Make Bad Treatment Decisions"

Rebecca Dresser is the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law and Professor of Ethics in Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. Since 1983, she has taught medical and law students about legal and ethical issues in end-of-life care, biomedical research, genetics, assisted reproduction, and related topics. Before coming to Washington University, she taught at Baylor College of Medicine and Case Western Reserve University. In 2003, she was a Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Tokyo, where she taught a short course in law and bioethics.

Professor Dresser received her law degree from Harvard Law School. She is a Fellow of the Hastings Center and is one of the "At Law" columnists for the Hastings Center Report. Her book, When Science Offers Salvation: Patient Advocacy and Research Ethics, was published by Oxford University Press in 2001. She is a co-author of The Human Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice (Oxford University Press, 2d Edition, 2008) and Bioethics and Law: Cases, Materials and Problems (West Publishing Co., 2003). She also is editor of and contributor to the forthcoming Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Professor Dresser has written commissioned papers for the National Academy of Sciences and National Bioethics Advisory Commission. From 2002-2009, she was a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. In 2011, she was appointed to the National Institutes of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee.

"Blood Libel and Generational Curses: the Legacy of American Eugenics"

This lecture will explore how the ancient idea of guilt passed down through families took root in 19th Century degeneracy theory and eventually found expression in the propaganda of the 20th Century eugenics movement. The case of Carrie Buck, which gave voice to the most infamous legal condemnation in Supreme Court history: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough," will be explored as the foremost legal analog of this idea.

USA Today article featuring Lombardo's Journal of Legal Medicine article on this topic

Paul A. Lombardo is a Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta. He was trained as both an historian and as a lawyer, and he holds a B.A. from Rockhurst College (Kansas City, Mo.), an M.A. from Loyola University of Chicago, and both the Ph.D. and J.D. degrees from the University of Virginia. From 1985-1990 he practiced law in California. From 1990 until 2006 he served on the faculty of the Schools of Law and Medicine at the University of Virginia, where he was the Director of the Center for Mental Health Law at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, then the Director of the Program in Law and Medicine in the Center for Biomedical Ethics.

Professor Lombardo’s more than 250 publications contain book chapters, encyclopedia entries, case reports, reviews and scholarly articles. His books include the award-winning Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell (2008) and A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era (2011), as well as a bioethics text: Fletcher’s Clinical Ethics, (3rd edition, 2005). He has spoken at more than 100 colleges, universities and medical centers in the U.S. and recently also lectured in Canada, Italy, Russia and Pakistan.

Professor Lombardo was recently appointed as a Senior Advisor to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues in DC. 

"Bioethics Meets Politics:
What Can We Learn from the Battle for Healthcare Reform?"

“Death Panels?” “Rationing” health care? Damaging Medicare? How do we find the truth when the public has become so confused? How can bioethics contribute to more enlightened discourse about just health care in an aging society?

Harry R. Moody is currently Director of Academic Affairs for AARP.

Dr. Moody is the author of over 100 scholarly articles and book chapters, as well as a number of books including: Abundance of Life: Human Development Policies for an Aging Society (Columbia University Press, 1988); Ethics in an Aging Society (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); and Aging: Concepts and Controversies, a gerontology textbook now in its 3rd edition. His most recent book, The Five Stages of the Soul, was published by Doubleday Anchor Books (1997).

A graduate of Yale (1967) and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University (1973), Dr. Moody taught philosophy at Columbia, Hunter College, New York University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. From 1999 to 2001 he served as National Program Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Faith in Action and, from 1992 to 1999, was Executive Director of the Brookdale Center at Hunter College. Before coming to Hunter, he served as Administrator of Continuing Education Programs for the Citicorp Foundation and later as Co-Director of the National Aging Policy Center of the National Council on Aging in Washington, DC. Moody is known nationally for his work in older adult education and recently stepped down as Chairman of the Board of Elderhostel. He has also been active in the field of biomedical ethics and holds appointment as an Adjunct Associate of the Hastings Center.

"The Puzzles of Pedophilia:Unanswered Questions and Problematic Policies"

This lecture explores why causes of pedophilia remain uncertain. Diagnoses are elusive, treatments seem ineffective, and neither imprisonment nor involuntary hospitalization provides satisfactory solutions. The Texas voluntary orchiectomy statute for incarcerated pedophiles will illustrate why these complex problems seem insoluble.

William J. Winslade is the James Wade Rockwell Professor of Philosophy of Medicine, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, a member of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. His background includes a Ph.D. in philosophy from Northwestern University, a J.D. from UCLA Law School, a Ph.D. in Psychoanalysis from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute, and an Honorary D.H.L. from Monmouth College.

He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, was a member of the California Bar Association from 1976 to 2004, and is currently a research psychoanalyst. Philosophic, legal, and psychoanalytic ideas are applied in his work to the study of human values in science, medicine, technology and law. His book, Confronting Traumatic Brain Injury: Devastation, Hope and Healing, was published by Yale University Press. He has written on topics such as privacy and confidentiality, human rights, death and dying, and legal and ethical aspects of mental health practice. legal and ethical aspects of mental health practice. He is currently writing The Birth, Life, and Death of the Brain: Legal and Ethical Perspectives with Stacey Tovino, J.D., Ph.D.

"Health Privacy in the Electronic Age"

As health providers and agencies race to link networks of electronic health records, will it be possible to protect health privacy?

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Mark A. Rothstein holds the Herbert F. Boehl Chair of Law and Medicine and is Director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. He received his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and his J.D. from Georgetown University.

Professor Rothstein is a leading authority on the ethical, legal, and social implications of genetics, privacy, occupational health, employment law, and public health law. He is Chair of the Subcommittee on Privacy and Confidentiality of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, the statutory advisory committee to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on health information policy, including the privacy regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. He is the immediate past-President of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics.

He is the author or editor of 19 books. His latest book is Genetics: Ethics, Law and Policy (with Andrews & Mehlman).