Bioethics Resources

Videos and podcasts

“Physician-Assisted Suicide:  The Debate and its Prospects in NC”

Bioethics workshops and conferences

1.  Medicine, Society, and Value.  Duke-Oxford Workshop in Practical Ethics.

2.  Rethinking the Ethics of Clinical Research.  A conference in honor of Alan Wertheimer.

This intensive workshop on clinical research ethics was in honor of the work of Alan Wertheimer. The aim was to foster in-depth discussion among participants about the ethics of payment to research subjects, the conditions under which consent is valid, the nature and justification of researcher obligations to communities (as opposed to individual subjects), and the nature and justification of special, supra-scientific obligations of researchers (e.g., for post-trial or  ancillary care).

Alan Wertheimer was Senior Research Scholar of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. Over the course of his career, Wertheimer made significant contributions to our understanding of such concepts as coercion, exploitation, consent, and undue inducement—all topics of great import to research ethics. His most recent book was Rethinking the Ethics of Clinical Research: Widening the Lens (Oxford 2010).

3.  Finding Consciousness.

Neuroscientists have recently developed ways to detect consciousness in patients with severe brain injury who show little or no outward sign of consciousness. These new methods raise a host of questions for scientists, philosophers, lawyers, ethicists and medical practitioners. This workshop brought together a group of international experts to discuss these interdisciplinary issues.