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NATIONAL BIOETHICS CONFERENCE - 3
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Theme : Governance of healthcare - ethics, equity and justice
Dates: November 18, 19 and 20, 2010
Venue: New Delhi
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Reports on National Bioethics Conference 2
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Bioethics and ayurveda
Bioethics, which is the title of this national conference, is a term that implies far more than medical ethics which dominates its sessions. What is bioethics? It is no more and no less than the ethics of living or ethics of life, which evolved from non-life over millions of years. Humans are a product of the evolutionary process like all other species, but they are unique insofar as they not only participate in the evolutionary process but also command and determine the future, as brought home so vividly by global warning. Nevertheless, as Professor Hubert Markl remarked, there is a circular relationship between nature and humankind because human concepts are nature's concepts. Human technological and economic inventiveness is no more than nature's way of acting upon itself and shaping its own future. The outcome could be glorious success or disastrous failure - in either case, nature acting through humankind bears partial responsibility for the outcome. This is fundamentally an ethical question. Are we right, for example, to cause the profoundest changes in biodiversity in all the 3 billion years of evolution by the mindless destruction of all living species to accommodate 10 billion human beings and their domesticated slave species of animals and plants? To make a sustainable future, we have an obligation to act in accordance with the dictates of reason and moral norms, and remain responsible for what we do. It is this undoubted fact of nature that makes us look for guidance to bioethics, without which life would be replaced by fossils. I would, therefore, compliment the organisers for placing the deliberations of this conference against the austere background of bioethics.
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Medicine, ethics and the law
It was towards the end of the last century that medical ethics assumed the character of a distinct discipline in India, attracting the attention of professionals from both law and medicine. However, bioethics was not a major issue in professional discourse at that time. The focus was more on technological applications in medicine and healthcare, and their human rights implications. The concern was on medical negligence and the need for consumer protection.
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Conference report
The recently concluded Indian Journal of Medical Ethics Second National Bioethics Conference brought together over 500 delegates, speakers and other participants from a wide range of disciplines. The participants were a blend of healthcare professionals, academicians, researchers, media professionals and, interestingly, many retired professionals and laypersons. Though doctors and researchers represented the majority, the blend clearly reflected the growing interest in bioethics amongst people of all walks of life and an increase in the strength and momentum of the bioethics movement in India.
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Comments from participants
I want to thank the organisers of the Second National Bioethics Conference (NBC 2007) for putting together an exceptional conference. I had an opportunity to also attend the first conference in Mumbai which I thought was an first-rate production but you outdid yourself with this year's effort. The theme--ethics and biotechnology--was particularly appropriate. The plenary sessions were excellent and the level of discussion has surely gone up a notch or two. The joint sessions that I attended were all very good (I wish that I could have attended them all) and the movies added yet another important dimension. There's no doubt in my mind that the two conferences have done much to raise the level of awareness and dialogue on so many important issues in biomedical ethics. I was particularly pleased to see so many college and university students in attendance. These conferences were so important to further interest and dialogue in this critical area and I would urge you to continue this important work with future
conferences.
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Report on National Bioethics Conference 1
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Reporting on the First National Bioethics Conference
The First National Bioethics Conference, November 25-27, 2005 (NBC, 2005), organised by the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME), brought together a diverse group of organisations and individuals in an effort to give a platform for bioethics discourse from across the country. The conference was organised around four issues: ethical challenges in HIV/AIDS; ethics of life and death in the era of high-tech health care; ethical responsibilities in violence, conflict and religious strife; and ethics and equity in clinical trials. Three cross-cutting themes that emerged during discussions were ethical challenges in biomedical and social science research, ethical responsibilities of clinical care providers, and the intersections of bioethics and public health/clinical medicine.
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