Ira W. DeCamp Bioethics Seminars

ABSTRACT: Modern medicine is advancing at breakneck speed. Gone are the days when with impunity doctors could deceive their patients, and not seek their informed consent. Yet today our biomedical choices—whether about IVF, gene therapy, end-of-life care, death-with-dignity, organ donation, mental health, public health or affordable health insurance—come with greater ethical quandaries than ever before. If we don’t try to make informed decisions ourselves, someone else—most likely politicians, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance providers—will make them for us.  Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die explores how bioethics can proactively help us to think through our ethical options before we find ourselves urgently confronted with decisions about our own health, the health of a loved one, or the well-being of our society. 

Amy Gutmann is an award-winning political scientist and the longest serving president of the University of Pennsylvania, where she oversees a large academic medical center and health system – home to six FDA-approved therapies within just the past 18 months, including groundbreaking immunotherapies that are lifesaving options for people with previously untreatable cancers.  A first-generation college graduate, Dr. Gutmann holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.  She chaired President Barack Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, and in 2018 Fortune Magazine named Gutmann one of the "World's 50 Greatest Leaders."

Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, of History and Sociology of Science, and of Philosophy. Moreno is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He was a senior advisor for President Barack Obama's bioethics commission.  His previous books include Impromptu Man, The Body Politic, Mind Wars, and Undue Risk. In 2018 the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.  The American Journal of Bioethics has called him “the most quietly interesting bioethicist of our time.”  

Stephen Macedo will chair.