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Call for Papers: International Conference on Ethical Issues in Medical Tourism

Conference Dates: June 24-25, 2010

Location: Vancouver, Canada

Sponsored by Simon Fraser University and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Medical tourism involves travel across national borders for medical procedures such as surgeries. Low and middle income countries including India, Thailand, and the Philippines, are actively marketing themselves as destinations for medical tourists with high quality medical care available without queues and at relatively low cost.

The burgeoning medical tourism industry has been advertised as creating new opportunities for host countries and patients alike. Yet, medical tourism raises a range of difficult ethical issues. Critics have charged that the active development of the medical tourism industry will inevitably create a two-tier medical system in departure and destination countries alike. Such a system in destination countries can result in the majority of medical resources being used to cater to foreign patients with little left for the less privileged citizens of the destination country. Moreover, medical tourists may face problems with continuity of care and quality of medical treatments, in addition to the burden of having to travel abroad for medical care.

The considerations noted above bring into question whether medical tourism is ethically defensible and, if not, whether any reforms and regulations would make it so. While some scholarship has begun to emerge on these issues, more discussion is needed of the range of difficult ethical and empirical questions surrounding medical tourism. We seek abstracts from the fields of philosophy, ethics, law, health policy, health services, and other disciplines that seek to answer a range of key questions: What are the ethical issues associated with medical tourism?  Who is responsible for potential wrongdoing in medical tourism?  What reforms and regulations are needed for ethical medical tourism?  Is ethical medical tourism possible?  Do reproductive and organ tourism raise special ethical issues?

The conference will feature two keynote presentations from leading experts on medical tourism:

• Dr. Leigh Turner, Associate Professor, Center for Bioethics, School of Public Health, and College of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota
• Dr. George Thomas, Chief Orthopaedic Surgeon at St. Isabel’s Hospital in Chennai, India and Editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics

We welcome paper abstracts and panel proposals from researchers from a variety of disciplines and countries, public health officials, and health practitioners . Thanks to the support of our funders, there is no fee for attending or participating in the conference, though all participants are asked to register in advance. The offices of the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences (http://www.fhs.sfu.ca/), Dean of the Faculty of Environment (http://www.fenv.sfu.ca/), and Academic Vice-President ( http://www.sfu.ca/vpacademic/ ) at Simon Fraser University along with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (www.cihr.ca) have provided funding for this event.

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words detailing your proposed presentation. Abstracts should be submitted by email in word or pdf format to medtour@sfu.ca by April 1st, 2010. Please include the presentation title, names and affiliations of authors, abstract, and contact details of the presenting author with all submissions. Abstracts will be reviewed, and those who have submitted abstracts will be notified of the outcome of the reviews by mid-April.  Those wishing to assemble panel presentation sessions at the conference should contact the organizers directly.  Additional information about the conference will be available by mid-February at: www.sfu.ca/medicaltourism.

Albany Law School, the Rapaport Ethics Across the Curriculum Program of Union College, and the Bioethics Program of Union Graduate College and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine is pleased to invite you to the upcoming conference on “Disability and Ethics through the Life Cycle: Cases, Controversies and Finding Common Ground,” to be held May 21st and 22nd on the Union College campus in Schenectady, NY.

For more information about the conference, or for instructions on how to submit a proposal for a contributed paper or conference panel, please see the Call for Papers attached below.

We look forward to seeing you in Upstate New York this Spring.

Disability and Ethics through the Life Cycle: Cases, Controversies, & Finding Common Ground

CALL FOR PAPERS

May 21-22, 2010
Union College, Schenectady, NY

Despite a common interest in facilitating good medical care, bioethicists and members of the disability rights community sometimes differ in their approach to issues arising in the bio-medical settings, especially on such polarizing issues as abortion and physician-assisted suicide.  Focusing on these polarizing issues, however, distracts attention from other ethical issues that affect people with disabilities in biomedical contexts.  This conference will offer a forum for bioethicists, disability-rights advocates, and other stakeholders with a different focus for discussing these issues by viewing disability from a life -cycle perspective.  People confront disability through the life cycle: infancy, childhood, reproductive years, middle age, and old age. At each age they confront situations with ethical dimensions that present them, their families, and their caregivers and biomedical researchers with ethical challenges.  This conference is designed to promote interdisciplinary conversations about these less frequently discussed ethical issues.

We are soliciting contributed papers or panels for highly interactive sessions. Those interested should submit a 250-word abstract describing original work that does not substantially overlap with papers already published. Topics of interest include but are not limited to specific cases where disability generates ethical issues during infancy, childhood, the reproductive years, middle age, and old age, or research on people with disabilities.  Because of the conference’s life-cycle focus, no papers on prenatal issues or assisted suicide will be considered.

The authors of accepted submissions will be invited to present their work at the conference. Presentations on these papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length. Accepted papers will be considered for publication in a printed volume to be edited by conference organizers.

General & Format Guidelines for Abstract Submission

1. Abstracts must not exceed 250 words.
2. Abstracts should contain the names, degrees and institutions of all authors.
3. Abstracts should contain the contact information of at least one author (the submitting author), including an email address.
4. Abstracts should be submitted to blooma at union.edu with a subject line of “Disability and Bioethics”.
5. Deadline for abstract submission is 15 March 2010.
6. Email notification of accepted abstracts will be sent by 5 April 2010.
7. The presenting author(s) of a contributed paper must register for the conference and pay the registration fee $150 in order to have the paper included in the conference.

Sponsors:  Albany Law School, Rapaport Ethics Across the Curriculum Program of Union College, & the Union Graduate College-Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bioethics Program

For additional information, contact blooma at union.edu or noltea at uniongraduatecollege.edu

I mentioned this recipe on my twitter feed, and a couple of people asked for the recipe, so here it is: Chicken Satay so easy your 7 year old can do a lot of it.

It’s important to note here that we deviated from the traditional Thai recipe and methodology. This is a kid-friendly recipe, which dramatically cuts down on the “hot” and ramps up the peanut. Kids have so many more tastebuds than adults that they taste things more dramatically. Also, traditionally, the chicken is skewered and grilled, with the sauce served on the side, whereas I pan sauteed everything in one pan. We served it on a bed of jasmine rice, which complimented it very nicely.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken (we used breasts, traditional recipe uses thigh)
• 1/2 tsp hot chili powder (more or less to taste)
• 1/2 tsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp veggie oil
• 1 sweet onion (we used purple)
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 4 tbsp extra crunchy peanut butter
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp cumin (ground)
• 1 tsp coriander (ground)
• 5 tbsp water
• (fresh lemongrass if you’ve got it…but don’t kill yourself trying to find it if you don’t live near an Asian market.)

Directions:

(If making rice; start it first, it’ll take longer than the rest of the prep.)

Dice your onions, and garlic, then cut your chicken into 1 or 2″ cubes.  (For sanitary reasons, do the chicken last.)

Heat your oil (I used olive) and sweat the onions and garlic.  (Don’t get them brown (caramelized), just soften them up. Remove them with a slotted spoon, and toss in your chicken to brown, stirring as needed to keep them from sticking or burning.

While the chicken is cooking, combine everything else and wisk until smooth.

When the chicken is fully cooked, reduce heat to a simmer.  Add onion mix back to the pan.  Pour on the sauce, heat until bubbly and slightly reduced.

Serve, and sprinkle with chopped fresh lemongrass (if available).

Voilà, you are done! Easy Americanized Chicken Satay.

I was incredibly saddened to learn that Brad Graham, founder of the infamous Break Bread with Brad feasts at SXSW, theater publicist and social networking pioneer who is credited with coining the term “blogosphere,” had died in his sleep.

He was so young, vibrant, wonderful, and so beloved by everyone who ever came into contact with him. It is hardly a fair universe that takes people like Brad, when he did so much and was so important to so many people.

He was one of the original members of MetaFilter, and a heartbreaking memorial thread with links and stories provides a fine example of an online wake. I think Brad would have been pleased.

My deepest sympathies go out to his mother and to everyone who was touched by him.

Not too long ago I read Iron Council by China Mieville…which resonated with me in ways I’m still having trouble reconciling. So, when I was sent these images from Russian motorcyclists (at Lost Biker Ru) touring through Northern Siberia, who came across the Lost Railroad, one of Stalin’s Follies; I had to share.

We’ve recently come across an abandoned railway in Abkhazia, abandoned as a result of USSR collapse when new “independent” republics couldn’t maintain the complicated and high-cost USSR legacy objects. But this one was abandoned long before the USSR collapse, it was doomed to be abandoned from the beginning. It was built by Stalin’s order in the middle of nowhere – deep inside Northern Siberia between Salekhard city and Igarka town. It was not connected with any other Russian Federal Railway System and the purpose of it still is not very clear, so as a senseless toy it was abandoned pretty soon and now rusts, easily accessible only by helicopter.

via Lost Biker Ru