Doctoral positions: Global effects of resource allocation, legal and cultural factors on end of life decision making in paediatric critical illness

Dr David Inwald, Senior Lecturer in Paediatric Intensive Care at Imperial College (and KCL MA Medical Ethics and Law alumnus), is looking for potential PhD students to investigate “Global effects of resource allocation, legal and cultural factors on end of life decision making in paediatric critical illness”. If interested please contact Dr Inwald at d.inwald [at] imperial.ac.uk.

Conference: The ethics of human enhancement are a concern in clinical practice – Myth or Reality?

15th March 2012, KCL Medical School, London Bridge
No registration fee/please register to allow us to plan numbers at kidskcl [at] gmail.com

This Intermural Student Bioethics Network meeting (KCL) is in association with with Royal Society of Medicine Open Section

The meeting will take place in the Gordon Museum at on the Guy’s Hospital Campus of Kings College London

The Gordon Museum entrance is on the mezzanine floor of The Hodgkin Building of the Guy’s Campus, nearest tube/train is London Bridge (St Thomas’ Street Exit)

The timetable is as follows

1515 – Registration and Coffee in the Asklepios Room, Ground floor, Gordon Museum

1530 – Welcome by Chair – Dr Andrew Papanikitas, President Elect, RSM Open Section

1535-1600 Human enhancement – what is it? Why should we think about it? Dr Tom Douglas, Uehiro Centre, Oxford University

1600 -1625 Cosmetic enhancement – in the eye of the beholder? Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen, Group Medical Director, BUPA and Board Member, Independent Healthcare Advisory Service

1625- 1650 Human enhancement and childhood potential – Professor Sam Lingam, Consultant neurodevelomental paediatrician

1650-1715
Human enhancement -What’s the story? – Dr Pete Moore, Science Journalist and author

1715-1800 A panel discussion – following which all delegates are invited to continue the conversation over a glass of wine and nibbles in the the Asklepios Room.

The meeting is supported by a Kings College London Roberts Open Grant

Lectures: CMLE Lent Lectures 2012

The Lent Lecture series has brought speakers from the fields of medical law, ethics, sociology and policy making to King’s College London since the founding of the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics in 1978.

The series is held in the second term each year, in the Strand campus; lectures are usually on Thursdays from 1-2 pm.

All are welcome to attend these lectures, including members of the public. Attendance is free of charge.

Lent Lectures 2011-12

Speakers this term are:

Lord Justice Munby
Chairman of the Law Commission
2 February 2012
More details

Dr Anna Dixon
Head of Policy, King’s Fund
9 February 2012 [new date]
More details

Dr Mark Sheehan
Oxford Biomedical Research Centre Ethics Fellow,
Ethox Centre, University of Oxford
23 February 2012
More details

Professor Albert Weale
Chair of Nuffield Council on Bioethics
Professor of Political Theory and Public Policy, UCL
Vice-President (Public Policy) at the British Academy
ESRC Professorial Fellow
1 March 2012
More details

Professor Allyson Pollock
Professor of public health research and policy,
Co-director Global health, policy, and innovation
Centre for primary care and public health
Queen Mary, University of London
8 March 2012
More details

Professor Mary Dixon-Woods
Professor of Medical Sociology, University of Leicester
15 March 2012
More details

For any queries, or to reserve a place, contact Neema Sofaer.

Lecture Series: AIDS @ 30 – Three Decades of Responding to HIV/AIDS

An extra session has been added to the AIDS @ 30 lecture series:

30 November 2011
Personal, Legal, and Medical Reflections on AIDS @ 30

• Professor Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law, School of Law, King’s College London
• Dr Mary Poulton, Consultant and Clinical Lead Sexual Health and HIV, King’s College Hospital

This joint session will take place at 5.15 pm in Room K6.29.

Questions and media enquiries should be directed to:

Dr Richard A. McKay
ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of History / Centre for the Humanities and Health
King’s College London
richard.mckay [at] kcl.ac.uk

Sponsored by the Economic & Social Research Council, the Department of History, the Centre for the Humanities and Health, Queer@King’s, and the School of Arts & Humanities Small Research Grants, King’s College London

Podcasts of previous lectures can be found here

Radio: Truth-telling in palliative care

One to One, BBC Radio 4, available indefinitely via the iPlayer

Evan Davis talks to Rob George, consultant in palliative care about truth-telling and disclosure in palliative care.

Radio: The Lobotomists

BBC Radio 4, available to listen again indefinitely via the iPlayer

A fascinating programme about the use of leucotomy or lobotomy in Portugal, the US and the UK and the doctors who championed it as a potential cure for many psychiatric disorders from the 1930s to the 1950s.

 

Job: Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics

“The Trustees of the Nuffield Foundation are seeking to appoint a Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, to succeed Professor Albert Weale, who retires in 2012.

The Council was established in 1991 with a remit to identify, examine and report on ethical questions raised by recent advances in biological and medical research.  It is jointly funded by the Foundation, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, but works independently.  It has a staff of eleven.

The Council is currently undertaking a fundamental strategic review in which it will set out its vision and plans for the coming years.  The incoming Chair will be expected to play a full part in that review, and to lead the Council in its implementation.

Expressions of interest are invited from people with the appropriate experience, public standing and independence to chair the Council for a period of up to five years.  Nominations would also be welcome. The time commitment varies, but averages three days a month. The post carries an honorarium of £7,000.

Please write in confidence before Friday 18 November 2011, enclosing a brief CV, or with your nomination, to the Director of the Nuffield Foundation, 28 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3JS, or email to arees [at] nuffieldfoundation.org.”

Play: The Tuesday Group

A play by Sue Eckstein, our former colleague at the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, developed in conjunction with St Christopher’s Hospice

Chowen Lecture Theatre, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton BN1 9PS, easily accessible on foot from Falmer station, about an hour and fifteen minutes by train from London Victoria

18th and 19th November 2011 at 8pm

Tickets £5/£4 concessions, available from The Dome box office 01273 709 709 or Brighton ticket shop.

Sue writes: “We would be delighted if you would join us at the first full production of The Tuesday Group which is being directed and performed by medical students at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. The play is a moving but at the same time realistic and humorous observation of the conversations that take place between people who know that they are approaching the end of their lives.”

Post-doctoral fellowship: Petrie-Flom Centre at Harvard University

Harvard Law School, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics Academic Fellowship in Health Law

“The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School Seeks Distinguished Candidates for Academic Fellowship Program.

PURPOSE: The Petrie-Flom Center is an interdisciplinary research program at Harvard Law School dedicated to scholarly research at the intersection of law and health policy, including issues of health care financing and market regulation, biomedical research and bioethics. The Academic Fellowship is a postdoctoral program specifically designed to identify, cultivate and promote promising scholars early in their careers. Fellows are selected from among recent graduates, young academics and mid-career practitioners who are committed to spending two years at the Center pursuing publishable research that is likely to make a significant contribution to the field of health law policy, medical innovation policy or bioethics. Our prior fellows have found employment as law professors at Harvard, UC Berkeley, BU, UCLA, Cornell and the University of Arizona.

PROGRAM: Petrie-Flom fellowships are full-time, two-year residential appointments starting in the summer of 2012. Fellows devote their full time to scholarly activities in furtherance of their individual research agendas. The Center does not impose teaching obligations on fellows, though in appropriate cases voluntary teaching opportunities may be made available. In addition to pursuing their research and writing, fellows are expected to attend and participate in research workshops on health law, bioethics, and biotechnology, and other events designated by the Center. Fellows are also expected to help plan and execute a small number of events in their field of expertise during their tenure, and to present their research in at least one of a variety of forums, including academic seminars, speaker panels, or conferences. Finally, the Center also relies on fellows to provide opportunities for interested students to consult with them about their areas of research, and to directly mentor our Student Fellows.

STIPEND AND BENEFITS: Fellows have access to the full range of resources offered by Harvard University. The Center provides each fellow with a private office, a research budget, and a stipend of $60,000 per full year.

ELIGIBILITY: Applicants must hold an advanced degree in a discipline that they intend to apply to issues relating to health law policy, biomedical research or bioethics. The Center particularly encourages applications from those who intend to pursue careers as law professors, but will consider any applicant who demonstrates an interest and ability to produce outstanding scholarship at the intersection of law and health policy, bioethics, or biotechnology during the term of the fellowship. Applicants will be evaluated by the quality and probable significance of their research proposals, and by their record of academic and professional achievement.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Applications will be accepted starting September 1, 2011. Completed applications must be received at petrie-flom [at] law.harvard.edu by 9:00 a.m. on November 14, 2011. Please note that ALL application materials must be submitted electronically, and should include:

1. Curriculum Vitae
2. PDFs of all transcripts from all post-secondary schools attended
3. A Research Proposal of no more than 2,000 words describing the applicant’s area of research and writing plans. Research proposals should focus less on describing an interesting topic than on demonstrating that the applicant has an interesting and original idea about the topic that seems sufficiently promising to develop further
4. A writing sample that demonstrates the applicant’s writing and analytical abilities and ability to generate interesting, original ideas. This can be a draft rather than a publication. Applicants who already have publications may also submit PDF copies of up to two additional published writings
5. Three letters of recommendation, emailed directly from the recommender. Letter writers should be asked to comment not only on the applicant’s writing and analytical ability, but on their ability to generate new ideas and their commitment to pursue that intellectual enterprise in this area. To the extent feasible, letter writers should provide not just qualitative assessments but also ordinal rankings. For example, rather than just saying a candidate is “great,” it would be useful to have a statement about whether the candidate is (the greatest, in the top three, among the top 10%, etc.) among some defined set of persons (students they have had, people they have worked with, etc.)

All application materials with the exception of letters of recommendation should be e-mailed by the applicant to: petrie-flom [at] law.harvard.edu

Letters of Recommendation should be emailed directly from the recommender to the same address.

For questions or additional information, contact: Katherine Paras, Administrative Director, kparas [at] law.harvard.edu”

Conference: The Future of Human Subjects Research Regulation

Conference Announcement and Call for Proposals:

“The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce plans for our annual conference, this year entitled: “The Future of Human Subjects Research Regulation”. The one and a half day event will take place Friday, May 18 and Saturday May 19, 2012 at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently released an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM), titled “Human Subjects Research Protections: Enhancing Protections for Research Subjects and Reducing Burden, Delay, and Ambiguity for Investigators,” which proposes to substantially amend the Common Rule for the first time in twenty years. This development, as well as attention by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, suggests we are at a moment when the regulation of human subjects research is ripe for re-thinking. This conference is meant to gather leading experts from the U.S. and across the globe to assist in that endeavor.

TOPICS: We currently plan on having panels with papers on the following topics specifically covered by the ANPRM:
- Calibration of oversight based on risk level
- The regulation of multi-site clinical studies, including international sites
- Data security and information protection standards, as well as informational risks
- Unanticipated problems and adverse event reporting
- Which institutions and types of research should be regulated by the Common Rule, including exempt and excused categories
- Consent to biospecimen research
- IRB appeal mechanisms

We also hope to have papers and panels on the following topics not directly covered by the ANPRM:
- Biobanking
- Claims to the proceeds of research, and access to successful products
- Liability and compensation for study-related injuries
- Online research and solicitation of subjects
- Disclosure of results
- Payment and other benefits to subjects
- Community engagement
- Research involving special populations
- Gaps between US regulations and international ethical standards
- IRBs and Data Safety and Monitoring Boards
- The participatory turn in human subjects research (i.e., subjects as partners)
- Regulatory risk aversion, in general
- The appropriate relationship between ethical review and institutional Risk Management
- IRBs and academic freedom
- The globalization of human subjects research, and research ethics

This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and paper proposals related to the conference’s general theme but not specifically listed above are welcome.

PARTICIPATION: If you are interested in participating please reply to: petrie-flom [at] law.harvard.edu as soon as possible, but not later than November 25, 2011, and include a brief, single-paragraph description of your proposal for presentation. Full abstracts will be due by January 6, 2012, and final submissions will be due after Spring Break, closer to the date of the event. The conference will pay travel expenses for those selected to present who must travel to Cambridge.”