Lecture: Anne Patrick and Carol Tauer October 10, 2005

Anne Patrick, the William H. Laird Professor of Religion and the Liberal Arts, and Carol Tauer, Ph.D., visiting professor at the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics, will give a presentation titled ?Bioethics and Emerging Medical Technologies: A Report from Europe? on Tuesday, Oct. 11, at noon at Carleton College?s Gould Library Athenaeum. The event is free and open to the public.

Patrick has particular interest in the areas of religion and literature, as well as Christian feminist theology and ethics. Tauer specializes in the area of prenatal human research, having published numerous articles, book chapters and papers on the topic.

Bioethics refers to the examination of the ethics and moral issues surrounding the vastly increasing medical technologies and biological research present in the last thirty years. An interdisciplinary concept, bioethics is a combination of medicine, law, philosophy and public policy. It covers a variety of topics including abortion, reproductive technologies, genetic intervention, cloning, the recent discussion on stem cell research, physician-assisted suicide and end-of-life medical decisions, among others. Bioethics also explores how different faiths perceive these issues.

This past summer, Patrick and Tauer participated in an international ?Ethics and Philosophy of Emerging Medical Technologies? conference in Barcelona, Spain. Patrick will present an overview of the conference, including topics such as reproductive technologies, cloning, stem cell research, organ donation and transplantation. Tauer will present a summary of her paper on ?Therapy Versus Enhancement in Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis,? addressing the question of whether gender should be a factor in decisions about implanting embryos from in-vitro fertilization. It will provide a wide variety of perspectives from doctors, researchers, health care administrators and bioethicists around the world on the ethics of medical technologies. The talk will be followed by a general discussion.

The past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, Patrick also was a founding vice-president of the International Network of Societies for Catholic Theology. She has written various articles, reviews, and the 1996 book ?Liberating Conscience: Feminist Explorations in Catholic Moral Theology.? She currently is writing a volume on feminist moral theology, titled ?Coming to Terms.? Patrick received her B.A. from Medaille College, her M.A. from the University of Maryland and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Tauer has contributed to an article on embryonic research in the ?Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 3rd edition.? Her writing has explored stem-cell research, cloning, research involving children, in vitro fertilization, gene therapy and genetic testing. She developed a course in Biomedical ethics at the College of St. Catherine, where she also served as professor and chair of the department of mathematics. In 1994, she joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Embryo Research Panel to recommend ethical guidelines for federal funding of research on infertility and early embryonic development. In 1999, she was appointed to another NIH panel working to develop guidelines for pluripontetial stem cell research. Tauer received her Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown University.

For more information and disability accommodations, call Carleton?s library at (507) 646-4260.