Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 18 August
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Not all ethical dilemmas are matters of life and death, but in the world of medicine many of them can be. Every day our doctors and scientists are called on to make judgements and choices, and the moral values that inform them make all the difference. If medical ethics extend beyond the Hippocratic Oath, what are the burning considerations and how do they manifest themselves?
Questions of pain management and patients' bills of rights, confidentiality and consent, eugenics and euthanasia, the right to choice and the issue of stem cell research will be considered by our panel of experts. ‘First do no harm’ never seemed so difficult.
Chaired by Helen MacDonald
Featuring
Paul Myles
Professor Paul Myles is Head of the Department of Anaesthesia & Perioperative Medicine at the Alfred Hospital and Monash University.
His clinical work includes major trauma, heart and lung transplantation, and cancer. He has published more than 200 papers, many in leading medical journals such as The Lancet and British Medical Journal.
He is a member of several journal Editorial Boards, is an Editorial Consultant for The Lancet, and has authored one textbook and eight book chapters. Professor Myles was a member of the Alfred Hospital Ethics Committee for 12 years, and has a strong interest in evidence-based and appropriate healthcare.
Paul Komesaroff
Professor Paul Komesaroff is a physician, medical researcher and philosopher at Monash University in Melbourne, where he is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Centre for Ethics in Medicine and Society.
He is a practising clinician, specialising in the field of endocrinology, and his scientific research work focuses on the effects of hormones on the cardiovascular system.
He is involved in a variety of activities related to ethics in medicine and society. These include his roles as Director of the Clinical Ethics Service at the Alfred Hospital, Ethics Convener of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Chair of the RACP Expert Advisory Group on Ethics, Executive Director of Global Reconciliation and Chair of the Australian Health and Development Alliance. He has been a member or chair of a number of human research ethics committees continuously for twenty years and is presently the Chair of the HREC of the Baker IDI Heart in Melbourne.
He is involved in a wide range of teaching activities, including supervision of undergraduate ethics teaching in the medical program at Monash University and co-convener of the annual Monash intensive research ethics course. He is engaged in many research and action projects in reconciliation and ethics, which cover clinical practice, public health, global health and research ethics. The projects span a very broad field, including the impact of new technologies on health and society, consent in research, the experience of illness, palliative care and end of life issues, complementary medicines, obesity, psychological effects of trauma, cross-cultural teaching and learning, the nature and impact of foreign aid, and capacity building in global health.
He is a present or past member or chair of a number of committees in professional societies, institutions and government, including the Ethics Advisory Committee of the US Endocrine Society, the Ethics Committee of the Australian Medical Association, the Victorian Justice Health Advisory Committee, the Victorian Department of Human Service Genetics Advisory Committee and Australians Donate. He is a Past President of the Australasian Bioethics Association.
He is the Chair of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry and Ethics Editor of the Internal Medicine Journal. He is the author of more than 300 articles in science, ethics and philosophy, and author or editor of twelve books, including Experiments in Love and Death (2008), Pathways to Reconciliation: Theory and Practice (2008), Objectivity, Science and Society (1986 and 2009), Drugs in the Health Marketplace (1994), and Sexuality and Medicine: Bodies, Practices, Knowledges (2004). He was convening editor of The Australian Human Research Ethics Handbook (2002).
Helen MacDonald
Helen MacDonald’s latest book is Possessing the Dead and she has previously won the Premier’s Literary Award.
Helen MacDonald is the author of the critically acclaimed Human Remains, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (History) and was shortlisted for the Ernest Scott History Prize. She is a Senior Fellow at The Australian Centre in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her new book, Possessing the Dead: The Artful Science of Anatomy, explores encounters between medical scientists, dead bodies and the law.
Jacinta Halloran
Jacinta Halloran is a Melbourne GP and writer. She has written on medical topics for a wide variety of publications, including the Sunday Age and Inside Story. Her second novel, Pilgrimage, was recently published (Scribe Publications, 2012).
In 2005 her short story, ‘Finding Joshua,’ won the inaugural Australian Doctor GP Writer of the Year Award. In 2007 her novel, Dissection, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript, and was published by Scribe Publications in 2008. She has also had short stories published in The Pen and the Stethoscope and New Australian Stories 2.0.
Jacinta completed an MA in Creative Writing at RMIT in 2009. She continues to work part-time as a GP, and also teaches ethics and empathic practice in the University of Melbourne postgraduate medical program.