Medical Ethics Division News
March - June 2009
Honors and Appointments
Dr. Pablo Rodriguez del Pozo Awarded Qatar Senior List Award
Pablo Rodríguez del Pozo, MD, PhD, JD, Associate Professor of Public Health/ Qatar in the Division of Medical Ethics, was awarded the Senior List Award by the Class of 2009 in Doha. This award is a significant achievement for best-ever professors in Qatar, in recognition of commitment to and excellence in teaching. Recipients are presented with a lapel pin, and their names are inscribed on a plaque displayed in the Weill Cornell Medical College/Qatar Teaching Hall of Fame. The awardees included four faculty members based at Weill Cornell Medical College/Qatar, two visiting faculty from Weill Cornell in New York, and two from Hamad Medical Corporation. Dr. Joseph J. Fins, Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics and Professor of Public Health, Medicine, and Medicine in Psychiatry, commented in congratulations, "This is a wonderful endorsement of one of our finest and most beloved teachers."
Joseph J. Fins, MD, FACP, Professor of Medicine, Public Health, and Medicine in Psychiatry and Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics, delivered the Phi Beta Kappa address at Wesleyan University’s 2009 Commencement ceremony. Membership for Phi Beta Kappa is conferred for scholastic achievement. Dr. Fins is chair of the Wesleyan Alumni Association. The title of his talk was “Minding Time.”
Dr. Fins was also elected to the American Osler Society. The Society brings together members of the medical and allied professions who are, by their common inspiration, dedicated to memorialize and perpetuate the just and charitable life, the intellectual resourcefulness, and the ethical example of William Osler (1849-1919).
Lectures, Presentations, and Events
Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, PhD, MS, Associate Professor of Public Health in the Division of Medical Ethics, presented a talk called “On Threatening Human Dignity by Creating New Types of Beings” at the 2009 American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting in Vancouver, BC, April 8-12, 2009. She also was invited to give a lecture titled “Social Values and Scientific Evidence” at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, March 27-28, 2009, for the Philosophy, Life Sciences, and Society Conference.
Mary Simmerling, PhD, Assistant Dean of Research Integrity and Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Division of Medical Ethics, was a panelist at a seminar on organ trafficking held March 25, 2009, at the Harvard Kennedy School. The event was sponsored by the School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and was co-sponsored by the Division of Global Health and Human Rights at Massachusetts General Hospital. The event was part of a series sponsored by a program at the Carr Center called the Initiative to Stop Human Trafficking.
Dr. Simmerling presented a paper on financial conflicts of interest in medical research at the International Symposium on Atherosclerosis in Boston on June 14, 2009. She also is participating in a stakeholders meeting to explore human subjects protections in Collaborative Community Engagement Research (CCER) at the University of Chicago June 24-25, 2009.
Joseph J. Fins, MD, FACP, Professor of Medicine, Public Health, and Medicine in Psychiatry and Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics, was a panelist at a Weill Cornell Medical College alumni program held this past April in Washington, DC. The panel conversation was called “Meeting of the Minds: Shaping Policy in Changing Times.” It was chaired by Cornell University President David J. Skorton, MD.
Publications
Joseph J. Fins, MD, FACP, Professor of Medicine, Public Health, and Medicine in Psychiatry and Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics, was the author of an article in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences titled “Being Conscious of Their Burden: Severe Brain Injury and the Two Cultures Challenge” (Volume 1157, March 2009, pp. 131-147). The article was included in an issue with the theme of Disorders of Consciousness. The issue editors were Nicholas D. Schiff, MD, Associate Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience and Public Health at Weill Cornell, and Steven Laureys, MD, PhD, Clinical Professor in the Department of Neurology, University of Liège, Belgium. Writing 50 years after the publication of C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution, Dr. Fins in his paper considers the many cultures that have to intersect to sustain and deepen the advances in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with disorders of consciousness. To bridge this “two-culture divide,” the paper contextualizes scientific developments in this field within work in medical ethics and the humanities. The author asserts that this line of inquiry cannot go forward responsibly absent input from the humanities and an appreciation of the lived experiences of patients and families who confront the quotidian and existential challenges of severe brain injury.
Inmaculada de Melo-Martin, PhD, MS, Associate Professor of Public Health in the Division of Medical Ethics, was the author of four recent articles: “Vulnerability, Ethics, and Biomedicine: Considering our Cartesian Hangover” was published in the April 11, 2009, issue of Lancet (pp. 1244-45). The article explores a continuing intolerance of uncertainty in some practitioners of contemporary scientific medicine. “Assisted Reproductive Technology in Spain: Considering Women’s Interests,” was published in Cambridge Quarterly of HealthcareEthics(8 [3] 2009: 1-8). An article Dr. de Melo-Martin wrote with Caren Heller, MD, MBA, Assistant Professor of Public Health and Medicine for the April 2009 issue of Academic Medicine (pp. 424-432) was titled “Clinical and Translational Science Awards: Can They Increase the Efficiency and Speed of Clinical and Translational Research?” The authors explored the role and limitations of academic CTSA centers in overcoming barriers to clinical and translational research and facilitating and increasing its efficiency and speed. An article titled “ Monterrey, C-Section Capital of Mexico: Examining the Ethical Dimensions,” written with M. Sañudo, was published in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, (2 [1] [2009]: 148-164).
Mary Simmerling, PhD, Assistant Dean of Research Integrity and Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Division of Medical Ethics, was the primary author for the paper "Researching Disabled Children: Abundant Caution Does No Harm?," which was presented at the 21st Annual Meeting of the European Academy of Childhood Disability in Vilnius, Lithuania on June 4, 2009. The article describes describe the ethical challenges in research involving disabled children, and suggest that protections from potential harms of inclusion must be balanced by careful consideration of the potential harms of exclusion.
Media and Publicity
The presentation by Dr. David Skorton, President of Cornell University, at this year’s Medical Ethics Division Seminar Series celebrating the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, was covered in the Dean’s Bulletin. Dr. Skorton’s talk was titled “Bridging the Two Cultures Divide in Medicine and the Academy.” The event and the series were organized by Dr. Joseph J. Fins, Professor of Medicine, Public Health, and Medicine in Psychiatry and Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics.
Dr. Pablo Rodriguez del Pozo’s lesson to premedical students at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar using The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy was described on page 23 of the Spring 2009 issue of Weill Cornell Medicine magazine. Dr. Rodriguez del Pozo, who is Associate Professor of Public Health/Qatar in the Division of Medical Ethics, used the novel to illustrate how a patient’s experience and concerns can differ from a doctor’s.
