Loading AI tools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics is a bioethics, biotechnology, and biotechnology law research center of Cumberland School of Law located on the Samford University campus in Birmingham, Alabama.[1] It is one of the few research centers of its kind at a United States law school, and, in conjunction with the Cumberland Law Review, the Center publishes an annual journal of scholarly works, which circulates in the United States and foreign countries.[2] [3][4][5][6]
Type | Research & Policy Institute |
---|---|
Established | December 2003 |
Dean | John L. Carroll |
Academic staff | David M. Smolin, director |
Students | Kyle Newchek |
Location | , , United States |
Publications | The Cumberland Law Review - co-publisher |
Affiliations | Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Cumberland Law Review. |
Website | cumberland |
The center was founded in December 2003 by David M. Smolin, who serves as its director.[7]
The Center focuses its research and conferences on the ethical and legal implications of biotechnology and biotechnology law, rather than pursuing a general emphasis on the subject of bioethics or bioethics law like many other academic research centers. Its location within Birmingham places it in an emerging center for biotechnology research and commerce.[3] Of primary importance for the Center, however, is generating law review articles on emerging biotechnology issues, which is often done as part of a conference speakers' presentation.
Research focuses on understanding current bioethical issues related to biotechnology and biotechnology law, as well as how different ideologies answer, or if they even can answer, different bioethical issues. The Center's approach to bioethical research attempts to understand "multiple perspectives" and evaluate the validity of each.[8]
The Center has sponsored five conferences that have dealt with the United States health care system, research on children, biofuels, genetically modified foods, and whether the field of bioethics and its methodology can provide actual answers to ethical questions or merely the opinions of ethicists.
The center hosts an annual Symposium at which experts give presentations on bioethical issues. The papers are published in the Cumberland Law Review. The symposia attempt to offer a broad range of views and seek factual, persuasive solutions to problems, rather than to generate opinionated debates.
Speakers have included United States Congressman Artur Davis, atmospheric scientist John Christy, medical ethics expert Gregory Pence, Vermont Law School's environmental center director Michael Dworkin, John Nyman, Larry Palmer, and law professors, entrepreneurs and other experts. Speakers often publish a paper in the Cumberland Law Review that develops the theme of their presentation. Many of the articles are available online.
The following are a selection of articles generated by the Center, which are available on-line. For a complete list refer to the Cumberland Law Review:
This Conference is being held on February 26, 2010 at Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama to discuss the causes and socio-economic impact of "missing girls" in China and India. "In China, approximately ten percent of females have disappeared from the population at birth in last generation alone. Similarly, about five percent of female are "missing" from India's population. Collectively, this indicates a loss of tens of millions of Chinese and Indian females which creates significant socioeconomic complications. The sex-ratio imbalances in China and India have grown worse despite successful economic development and pressures toward cultural modernization. Scholarship on "the missing girls" of China and India has been increasingly successful in documenting and identifying some of the most direct causes. The purpose of this symposium is to gather and urge a group of the leading scholars to discuss remedies to the problem of missing girls." [19]
This Conference was hosted on February 27, 2009 and its stated purpose was that: "The public in the United States and throughout much of the world has become keenly aware of the limitations of continued reliance on petroleum-based fuels. Concerns over diminishing supplies, growing demand, price instabilities, environmental impacts, international competition for limited resources, energy security, and the costs of foreign involvement necessitated by our “addiction to oil” have created an imperative toward renewable energy. Yet, some view the United States’ first major venture into renewable fuels, corn-based ethanol, as a failure that has contributed to higher food prices and brings little overall environmental or supply gain. Political and popular rhetoric suggests that a technological fix, in forms such as second-generation biofuels, fuel cells, electric cars, or a hydrogen economy are just around the corner, and yet most estimates posit that petroleum based fuels will predominate for at least several more decades. President Barack Obama has promised a new and different energy policy. This conference, taking place a little more than month into the new administration, will look at the possibilities for transportation energy policy both for the United States and other nations. Upon examination, government has a limited set of tools it can use to promote a transition to renewable energy and promote energy conservation/efficiency. Options include subsidies or tax credits for renewable energy, taxing carbon-based energy, funding research, promoting/funding/designing for mass transit, renewable fuel standards, CAFÉ-fuel efficiency standards, and mandating that energy efficient/alternative energy cars be built in exchange for financial help for the car industry. These issues of supply, demand, price, security, nationalism, and environment occur within an interdependent world. Hence, this conference will look beyond the United States to transportation energy policy throughout the world."[20]
The speakers for this event were:[21]
This Conference was hosted on Thursday February 22, 2007 at Cumberland School of Law. The keynote speaker of the Conference was United States Representative Artur Davis (D) who spoke about the need for change in the current health care delivery system in the United States.[24] His speech was delivered in part as a presentation of the Thurgood Marshall Lecture series sponsored by the Black Law Students Association at Cumberland.[25][26]
The sponsors for the Symposium included the Center for Biotechnology, Law, and Ethics, Cumberland Law School, Samford University, the Cumberland Law Review, and Cumberland Law School's Chapter of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA)
The five panels were:
This Conference was hosted on Monday, February 10, 2006 at Cumberland School of Law.[28] The speakers and publications analyzed global energy policy, climate change and the role of biofuels as a supplement to the petroleum-based economy in both the utility and transportation sectors. Host professor David Smolin stated that "[r]aising awareness of what's happening with traditional and alternative energy sources can help us as a society make more informed choices." [1] [29]
It included six panels and two question and answer sessions. The panels were:
The participants were:
The Brochure for the Conference may be viewed at:[30]
This Conference was hosted on Monday, March 14, 2005 at Cumberland School of Law and analyzed how secular and religious methodologies answered the previously mentioned bioethical dilemmas. The impetus for the Conference sprang from three common criticisms of the field of Bioethics that "1) basic principles of bioethics are vague and indeterminate, and provide no real answers to bioethics dilemmas...2) there is no real expertise in the field but merely the subjective answers of individual bioethicists and...3) that the mainstream bioethics field has some of the "wrong" answers to basic bioethical dilemmas..."
The Conference was sponsored by Cumberland School of Law's Center for Bioetechnology, Law and Ethics, the Cumberland Law Review and Cumberland School of Law.
It included three panels:
The participants were:
This Conference was hosted on Monday, March 31, 2004 at the Bradley Lecure Center, Children's Harbor Building of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Sponsors were Cumberland Law School's Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics, the Cumberland Law Review and the Center for Ethics & Values in the Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Conference analyzed the impact of the production and use of genetically modified foods.
It included six panels:
The participants were:
This conference was hosted on March 21, 2003 by the Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics, the Center for Ethics and Values in the Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Alabama School of Medicine Division of Continuing Medical Education.
The Conference analyzed the ethical implications of research on children. There were four panels at the conference:
The Children's research brochure may be viewed at:[6]
The following is a list of fellows who have served the Center:[32]
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.