The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Bioethics meet begins tomorrow

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Wednesday, Dec 05, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Bioethics meet begins tomorrow

Staff Reporter

It is organised by the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics
The conference will be held at NIMHANS Convention Centre

Bangalore: Even as healthcare in India reaches new technological sophistication and medical tourism booms in cities such as Bangalore, several concerns remain unaddressed: Is healthcare technology developed by ethical means? Should we be worried about foreign drug companies conducting clinical trials in India? Are women being helped or harmed by new reproductive technologies? Are healthcare technologies accessible to all?

To discuss these questions and more, the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics will be organising the second National Bioethics Conference on the theme “Moral and ethical imperatives of healthcare technologies: scientific, legal and socio-economic perspectives on use and misuse.” The three-day conference will begin here on Thursday.

Speakers, representing Indian and international scientific institutions, medical practice and non-governmental organisations include Abhay Bang, Director, Society of Education, Action and Research in Community Health, Maharashtra; Vasantha Muthiswamy, Senior Deputy Director-General, Indian Council of Medical Research; Ruth Macklin, adviser to the World Health Organisation’s HIV Vaccine Initiative; and Farhat Moazam, founding chairperson of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Culture of the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation in Karachi.

The plenary sessions will focus on three sub-themes: the use and misuse of technologies in clinical practice, research on healthcare technologies and public health and policy dimensions of technologies.

Forty-eight papers will be presented and 14 workshops conducted during the conference on the following subjects: reproductive and sexual health ethics; public health ethics; clinical trials; ethics of transplantation; impact of healthcare technologies on women; healthcare technologies, public health and policies; ethical issue for AIDS vaccine trials in developing countries; and Intellectual Property Rights and international trade.

The conference will be held at the Convention Centre, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences from December 6 to 8. For more information, call Vijay at 9844181294.

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