Interested in pursuing graduate studies in Bioethics?
Want to broaden your knowledge of ethics in the medical and environmental fields?
Come to the open house at the NYU Center for Bioethics!

Wednesday, November 10th
5:30-7:30 PM
285 Mercer Street, 10th Floor
(Between Waverly and Washington Pl.)
New York, NY 10003

RSVP Required

For more information, visit http://gsas.nyu.edu/object/grad.admissions.openhouse .

The NYU Center for Bioethics invite you to attend a public lecture by

Thomas Pogge
Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, Yale University
Research Director, Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo

Friday, November 5, 2010
4:00-6:00 pm
RSVP required-reception to follow.

5 Washington Pl., Room 202
(NE Corner of Washington Place at Mercer Street)

I propose the Health Impact Fund as a complement to the current patent regime. The HIF is a pay-for-performance mechanism that would offer innovators the option — no obligation — to register any new medicine. By registering a product, the innovator would agree to make it available, during its first decade on the market, everywhere at no more than the lowest feasible cost of production and distribution (to be determined through competitive tenders submitted by generic manufacturers). In exchange, the HIF would each year divide an annual reward pool among all registered products in proportion to their assessed health impact in that year. The HIF would not merely foster the introduction of new high-impact medicines, especially against the long-neglected diseases of the poor, and facilitate access to registered products by tightly limiting their price. The HIF would also motivate registrants to ensure that their products are widely available (perhaps at even lower prices), competently prescribed and optimally used.

Thursday, October 28, 2010
4:30-7:00 PM
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor
New York City, New York 10003
RSVP required




Moderator:
Richard Stewart, University Professor John Edward Sexton Professor of Law;
Chair and Faculty Director, Hauser Global Law School Program; Director, Center for Environmental and Land Use Law

Panel Discussion w/Editors:
Dale Jamieson, Director of Environmental Studies at New York University
Steve Gardiner, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Washington
Simon Caney, Professor in Political Theory and Tutorial Fellow in Politics at Magdalen College, Oxford University
Henry Shue, Senior Research Fellow at Centre for International Studies, Oxford University

Interested in pursuing graduate studies in Bioethics?
Want to broaden your knowledge of ethics in the medical and environmental fields?
Come to the open house at the NYU Center for Bioethics!

Wednesday, October 13th
5:30-7:30 PM
285 Mercer Street, 10th Floor
(Between Waverly and Washington Pl.)
New York, NY 10003

RSVP Required

The NYU Center for Bioethics & the Environmental Studies Program
 invite you to attend a public lecture by
  
Evelyn Fox Keller
History and Philosophy of Science, M.I.T.

'Climate Gridlock: Science, Politics, and Credibility'

Friday, October 8, 2010
4:00-6:00 PM
5 Washington Place
1st Floor Auditorium
(NE Corner of Washington Pl. & Mercer St.)
Reception to Follow-RSVP required


According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, year, spring and summer on record.  Furthermore, our best scientific analyses predict that worse – much worse – is to come.  Nevertheless, in the midst of this summer’s record-breaking heat, the US Senate declined to even consider legislation to regulate greenhouse gas emission.
 
How did we come to  such an impasse?  One might think that the high stakes of climate change would make expertise on the subject our highest priority, yet, just when we need it most, scientific authority has proven of depressingly little use in the forging of responsible policy. I suggest that this failure requires us to rethink both the relation between science and politics, and the nature of scientific proof and responsibility.

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This will be an excellent chance to meet with the faculty and students in the Master's Program in Bioethics: Life, Health, and the Environment and discuss the the range of Program options and career benefits. Food and refreshments will be served. If you have any questions, please contact Amanda Anjum at asa4@nyu.edu. For  information about program requirements and the admissions procedure, visit http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu/page/graduate .

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The NYU Center for Bioethics invite you to attend a public lecture by

Riggins R. Earl, Jr. Ph. D.

National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, Tuskegee University

Monroe  N. Work’s Ethical Challenges as a Social Science Researcher:
Racism, Classism, and Blacks’ Public Health Crisis

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
4:55-6:35 PM
 NYU Silver Center
100 Washington Square East, Room 711
New York, NY 10003      

RSVP required: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GLXSMXW or email Amanda Anjum at asa4@nyu.edu .   

Monroe Work was a black trained sociologist with a Masters degree, which he earned from the University of Chicago more than a century ago. Work believed that published factual research data about racism and poverty in America would empower interracial alliances for correcting blacks’ deplorable health situation. Mr. Work spent most of his professional life, primarily at Tuskegee University, researching and advocating mostly through publications for blacks’ public health needs. Professionally trained both as a social scientist and clergyman, Monroe Work faced several ethical challenges that contemporary public health ethical discourse must not ignore: a) that of addressing the dire public health crisis of black Americans a century ago as a  virtue and social justice issue; b) that of  assuming that the social scientist’s fact finding method  produces liberating truth  for resolving racial injustice; and c) that of doing  social science research  within the ideological  debate  over  the right  political approach to the race problem  produced by  Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Washington’s ideological approach to racism required that blacks embrace a race compromising ethic, i. e., that they exchange their political rights for whites’ moral favor. DuBois’ ideological approach to the problem of racism required that blacks choose a race protesting ethic, i.e., that they divorce their constitutional rights from arguments about the readiness of their character. How did these ethical challenges, endemic to his world view, impact Work’s approach as a social researcher and vice versa? In what way did Work’s contribution as a social scientist and moral activist influence the public health policy of his generation. Given the despairing reality of black America’s growing public health crisis, how might public health ethicists benefit from such a study of Monroe Work’s ethical challenges?

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Friday, March 26, 2010

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Friday, March 12, 2010

Judith Jarvis Thomson, Frances Kamm and others have offered intuitive cases that they believe show that intentions are not relevant for permissibility.  I argue that there are reasons to be suspicious of these cases.  First, I present cases that are structurally similar to Thomson et al.’s cases, but ones that appear to show that intentions are sometimes relevant for permissibility.  Next I explain why Thomson et al.’s cases may be giving the mistaken intuitive impression that intentions are not relevant for permissibility.  Finally, to support further the idea that intentions are sometimes relevant for permissibility, I consider whether and how this idea can be given additional, theoretical justification.  If I am right, there are reasons to believe that intentions are sometimes relevant for permissibility.

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Thursday, March 4, 2010



This will be an excellent chance to meet with the faculty and students in the Master's Program in Bioethics: Life, Health, and the Environment and discuss the the range of Program options and career benefits. Food and refreshments will be served. If you have any questions, please contact Amanda Anjum at asa4@nyu.edu. For  information about program requirements and the admissions procedure, visit http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu/page/graduate .

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Tuesday, February 9, 2010



He has spent thirty years in the field of environmental studies, promoting an approach that is precisely matched to the unique qualities of Unity College:
• Broadening the constituency for conservation
• Serving the underserved
• Modeling real-time, frugal sustainability
• Emphasizing the outdoors, hands-on, ecological learning experience
• Engaging the regional community in intellectual, artistic, and recreational opportunities

Thomashow is the founder of “Whole Terrain”, an environmental literary publication, originating at Antioch New England Graduate School, and the publication “Hawk and Handsaw,” a journal of reflective sustainability, published at Unity College. He serves on the advisory board of The Orion Society, the Coalition on Environmental and Jewish Life (COEJL), and the Teleosis Institute. Thomashow is a founding member of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD), a national organization that supports interdisciplinary environmental studies in higher education. He serves on the Steering Committee of the American Colleges and University President’s Climate Commitment (ACUPCC).

Thomashow's book, Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist (The MIT Press, 1995) offers an approach to teaching environmental education based on reflective practice—a guide to teachers, educators and concerned citizens alike that incorporates issues of citizenship, ecological identity, and civic responsibility within the framework of environmental studies. His most recent book, Bringing the Biosphere Home (The MIT Press, 2001) is a guide for learning how to perceive global environmental change. It shows readers that through a blend of local natural history observations, global change science, the use of imagination and memory, and spiritual contemplation, you can learn how to broaden your spatial and temporal view so that it encompasses the entire biosphere. It suggests how global environmental change might become the province of countless educational initiatives—from the classroom to the Internet, from community forums to international conferences, from the backyard to the biosphere. His most recent essay (2007), “The Gaian Generation: A New Approach to Environmental Learning” provides a radical new approach to teaching about global environmental change.Currently, he is in the initial stages of two writing projects: one a book on the ecology of improvisation, linking music, play and sports, and patterns in nature, a second a series of essays exploring how an environmental studies education promotes virtue.

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Friday, November 20, 2009

James Griffin

Ethics Naturalized

Under the influence of natural scientists, especially of Newton, philosophers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries made ethics entirely empirical (e.g. Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Mill). Today, in the 21st century, there is a new proselytizing, naturalizing movement (e.g. cognitive science, moral psychology, evolutionary ethics). 

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009




The Bioethics Program will hold an open house on  Wednesday, November 18  for students who have an interest in the Master's Program in Bioethics: Life, Health, and the Environment. This will be a great chance for prospective students to find out about the admissions process and meet with faculty and students.

Food and refreshments will be served, so we hope to see you there! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Amanda Anjum at amandaanjum@nyu.edu. For more information about admissions and program requirements, visit http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu/page/graduate .

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

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Monday, November 2, 2009

Graduate School of Arts & Sciences' Master's Open House


Refreshments will be served. Please RSVP.

For more information visit http://gsas.nyu.edu/object/grad.admissions.openhouse

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Friday, October 23, 2009

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Friday, October 9, 2009

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Tuesday, October 6- Friday, October 9, 2009

Walk 21 NYC Conference

New York City will host Walk21, the annual international walking conference, in October 2009. The conference will take place at New York University in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, from Tuesday, October 6 to Friday October 9, 2009 and will be hosted by the New York City Department of Transportation.

New York City will host Walk21, the 10th International Conference on Walking and Liveable Communities, in October 2009. The conference will take place at New York University from Wednesday, October 7 to Friday, October 9, and is sponsored by the New York City Department of Transportation.

The goal of the Walk21 conference series is to support and inspire professionals to evolve the best policies and implement the best initiatives for creating and promoting environments where people choose to walk as an indicator of livable communities. The Walk21 conference attracts delegates from around the world to hear from leading professionals about programs, policies and projects that really work and explore those themes in action through walking tours and visits arranged in the host city.

This year's conference themes are: (1) Walkable communities are sustainable communities; (2) Paved with gold: investing in the public realm for a successful city; (3) There is more to walking than walking: design strategies for urban quality; and (4) Fit cities: community design for active living.

The registration rate will go up after September 10th, so sign up now!

For the conference agenda and to register, go to:
http://www.walk21.com/newyork/newyork.html

If you would like to volunteer for this event, please contact Regina Drew at regina dot drew at nyu dot edu.

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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Ecological Footprint: A Decision Tool for Facing Climate Change and Building a Sustainable Future

featuring
Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D.

We all know nature doesn’t do bailouts. Yet this week, on September 25, humanity will have demanded all the ecological services that nature can provide this year – from filtering CO2 to producing raw materials for food. From now until December 31, we are borrowing from the future. Mathis Wackernagel, co-creator of the Ecological Footprint, will give a lecture on the numbers behind this deficit, and how action at Copenhagen can reverse this global trend. The Ecological Footprint is a resource accounting tool that measures how much nature we use compared to how much we have -- and the current ledgers are sobering.

Mathis is co-creator of the Ecological Footprint and has worked on sustainability issues for organizations in Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia and Australia, and has lectured for community groups, governments and their agencies, NGOs, and academic audiences at more than 100 universities around the world. Mathis previously served as the director of the Sustainability Program at Redefining Progress in Oakland, California, and directed the Centre for Sustainability Studies / Centro de Estudios para la Sustentabilidad in Mexico, which he still advises. He is also an adjunct faculty at SAGE at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mathis has authored or contributed to over 50 peer-reviewed papers, numerous articles and reports and various books on sustainability that focus on the question of embracing limits and developing metrics for sustainability, including Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth; Sharing Nature’s Interest; and WWF International’s Living Planet Report. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. in community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. There, as his doctoral dissertation with Professor William Rees, he created the Ecological Footprint concept. Mathis’ awards include an honorary doctorate from the University of Berne in 2007, a 2007 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, a 2006 WWF Award for Conservation Merit and the 2005 Herman Daly Award of the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics.

The Educating for Sustainability Series is sponsored by the NYU Environmental Studies Program and the Sustainability Task Force.

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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Martin Bunzl

Professor Bunzl is a Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and directs the Initiative on Climate and Social Policy, a joint Program of the Eagleton Institute of Politics, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Environmental and Biological Sciences.

Professor Bunzl will argue that it may be rational for the Developing World to favor a higher carbon concentration in the atmosphere than the Developed World.

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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Bioethics Welcome Back Party

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Tuesday, May 5, 2009

NYU's Environmental Studies Program, Master's Program in Global Public Health, and the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development presents:

Weather & Death in India: Mechanisms and Implications for Climate Change

featuring
Dr. Michael Greenstone

May 5, 2009
4:15pm - 5:30pm
NYU Kimmel Center, Room 914 (9th Floor)
60 Washington Square South
Free and Open to the Public
RSVP online:  www.nyu.edu/mph/events

Is climate change truly a matter of life and death?  Join us as acclaimed economist Dr. Michael Greenstone discusses revelatory new research on the impact of variations in weather on well-being in India.  The results indicate that high temperatures dramatically increase mortality rates; for example, 1 additional day with a mean temperature above 32° C, relative to a day in the 22° - 24° C range, increases the annual mortality rate by 0.9% in rural areas.  This effect appears to be related to substantial reductions in the income of agricultural laborers due to these same hot days.  Finally, the estimated temperature-mortality relationship and state of the art climate change projections reveal a substantial increase in mortality due to climate change, which greatly exceeds the expected impact in the US and other developed countries.

Michael Greenstone is the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings. His research is focused on estimating the costs and benefits of environmental quality. He has worked extensively on the Clean Air Act and examined its impacts on air quality, manufacturing activity, housing prices, and infant mortality to assess its costs and benefits. He is currently engaged in a large scale project to estimate the economic costs of climate change. Other current projects include examinations of: the benefits of the Superfund program; the economic and health impacts of indoor air pollution in Orissa, India; individual's revealed value of a statistical life; the impact of air pollution on infant mortality in developing countries; and the costs of biodiversity.

Greenstone is also interested in the consequences of government regulation, more generally. He is conducting or has conducted research on: the effects of federal antidiscrimination laws on black infant mortality rates; the impacts of mandated disclosure laws on equity markets; and the welfare consequences of state and local subsidies given to businesses that locate within their jurisdictions. He is a member of the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of EPA's Science Advisory Board and his research has been funded by the NSF, NIH, and EPA. In 2004, Professor Greenstone received the 12th Annual Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Best Paper in the Field of Health Economics. He is currently an editor of The Review of Economics and Statistics.

Presented as part of the ongoing series Statistics in Society, presented by the The Center for the Promotion of Research Involving Innovative Statistical Methodology (PRIISM).

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Cameron Hepburn

Beating Long Odds: A New Global Deal on Climate Change

Climate policy at the international level is moving towards agreeing an emissions pathway, and distributing responsibilities between countries. A feasible framework can be constructed in which each country takes on its own responsibilities and targets, based on a shared understanding of the risks and the need for action and collaboration on climate change. The global deal should contain six key features: (i) a pathway to achieve the world target of 50% reductions by 2050, where rich countries contribute at least 75% reductions; (ii) global emissions trading to reduce costs; (iii) reform of the clean development mechanism to scale-up emission reductions on a sectoral or benchmark level; (iv) scaling up of research and development funding for low-carbon energy; (v) an agreement on deforestation; and (vi) adaptation finance.

Dr. Hepburn is an environmental economist specializing in climate policy and long-term decision-making. He holds teaching and research fellowships at Oxford, is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and was a contributor to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

The Educating for Sustainability series is sponsored by NYU's Environmental Studies Program and the Sustainability Task Force.

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Bioethics Program will hold an open house on Thursday, April 16th at 5:30 p.m. for students who have an interest in the Master's Program in Bioethics: Life, Health, and the Environment. This will be a great chance for prospective students to find out about the admissions process and meet with faculty and students. We will also announce two new faculty appointments in medical and environmental ethics, as well as next year's graduate courses.

Food and refreshments will be served, so we hope to see you there! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Amanda Anjum at amandaanjum@nyu.edu.

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Dr. Hernan Sandoval

Damming Patagonia

For a pdf flyer, please click here.

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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

S. Matthew Liao,

"The Duty to Disclose Adverse Clinical Trials"

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Friday, February 20, 2009

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Friday, January 30, 2009

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Friday, October 10, 2008

Greg Bognar

Cost effectiveness analysis is the standard analytical tool for evaluating the aggregate health benefits of treatments and health programs. According to a common objection, however, its use may lead to unfair discrimination against people with disabilities. I begin by arguing that the discrimination objection is a bundle of related objections with different targets and background assumptions. I focus on a version on which discrimination is the consequence of the use of one of the inputs of cost effectiveness analysis -- namely, quality adjusted measures of health benefit. I show that a standard defense of these measures, which appeals to their impartiality, does not succeed. After discussing impartiality in more general terms, I end with exploring a proposal for determining the conditions under which the use of quality adjusted measures leads to discrimination against people with disabilities that is indeed unfair.

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008



Join Dr. Miriam Aschkenasy, Oxfam America’s Public Health Specialist, as she discusses innovations in public health, disaster risk reduction, and insights gained over the past several years working in Africa and Asia. Hear a first-hand account about the issues, progress, and the challenges that lie ahead for humanitarian response.

How does a drought or a disease outbreak with no name in a remote and dusty region of Africa find its way onto the radar screen of an international aid group a third of the way around the world? DEWS – an innovative humanitarian aid pilot project in southern Ethiopia – is tracking changes in local conditions that could signal the onset of a humanitarian disaster – and get people help before problems spiral out of control.

A light supper will be served so please RSVP by October 14 to Maryna Lansky marynalansky@hotmail.com or (212) 962-0098.

This event is co-sponsored by the New York Committee for Oxfam America and the NYU Environmental Studies Program.

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Thursday, September 18, 2008

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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Abstract: Across thirty years, medical ethics has mainly been concerned with   clinical ethics. This focus has marginalised ethical questions about public health: the central requirements of clinical ethics, such as   demands for informed consent or for a just distribution of health care, cannot generally be met by public health interventions. This is unavoidable: many public health interventions are public goods which are not and cannot be allocated to individuals, and cannot be adjusted to individual choice or subject to consent requirements. In marginalising questions about public health, work in bioethics has also marginalised ethical questions about global health issues, where public health interventions are often of fundamental importance. An approach to bioethics that takes questions of public and global health seriously would need to be anchored in political philosophy. It would need not only to look beyond questions about informed consent and individual autonomy, but beyond questions about the proper distribution of health care to individuals. In particular it needs to focus on the differences between interventions that are acceptable without the consent of those whom they may affect, and those which are not. I shall suggest that careful consideration of this demand shows that clinical interventions too, although they are provided for individuals and can be subject to consent requirements, rely on many structures and procedures that cannot be matters of individual choice. Clinical ethics therefore presupposes an ethics of public health.

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Thursday, May 1, 2008

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Institute for Public Health Sciences, and Yeshiva University Presents:

Onora O'Neill

Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge University
President, The British Academy
Life Peer: The House of Lords

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Friday, May 2, 2008

The New York University Center for Bioethics and Philosophy Department
invites you to attend a lecture by:

Onora O'Neill

Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge University
President, The British Academy
Life Peer: The House of Lords

Naturalism, Normativity, and Applied Philosophy

Friday, May 2, 2008

4:00-6:00 PM

5 Washington Place 1st Floor Auditorium

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

 

The NYU Center for Bioethics invites you to a lecture by

Professor James Dwyer
Center for Bioethics and Humanities, SUNY Upstate Medical University

Connecting Bioethics and Environmental Ethics: Life Expectancies and Ecological Footprints

Thursday, March 27, 2008
6:00-7:30 PM
5 Washington Place (NE Corner of Mercer Street)
Room 202

For further information, contact the Center for Bioethics at 212-992-7999 or visit us at http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu/page/home.
To download a PDF of the flyer, click here.

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

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Announcement: Professor William Ruddick of the Philosophy Department has been appointed the first Arthur Zitrin Professor of Bioethics and Director of the NYU Center for Bioethics.

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Announcement:

Faculty Positions

Center for Bioethics, Arts and Science
New York University

Start date:  September 1, 2008 for both positions (pending administrative and budgetary approval; the start date for the open rank faculty position is negotiable for more senior applicants)

Description of institution:  A new Center for Bioethics at New York University promotes a broad conception of bioethics encompassing both medical and environmental ethics through conferences, workshops, public lectures, and a Master’s degree program. Based in the Faculty of Arts and Science, the Center draws on faculty affiliates and programs throughout the University, including environmental studies, medicine, law, education, and public service. The Center will begin a Master’s program in “Bioethics: Life, Health, and Environment” in September 2007. A description of the program can be viewed at http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu.

Description of position:  Applications are invited for both an open rank faculty position and an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow position.

The open rank faculty position is for a tenured or tenure-track Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or full Professor.

The initial appointment for the Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow position will be for one year, renewable annually for a maximum of three years. The applicant will be expected to give a graduate course in the new MA in Bioethics Program in Spring 2009.

NYU is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

Requirements:  Applicants for the open rank faculty position may be from any academic discipline. The applicant should have studied, taught, and written on relevant moral or general philosophical matters.

Applicants for the Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow position should have written and preferably taught in areas of medical, environmental, and/or animal ethics and have completed a Ph.D. no more than three years before the application date.

Review of applications begins:  September 17, 2007

Contact information:  For both positions, please submit curriculum vitae, letters of recommendation (or, for more senior applicants applying for the open rank position, a list of recommenders), and two relevant essays to Professor William Ruddick, Director of the Center for Bioethics, 5 Washington Place, Room 305, New York University, New York, NY 10003, Attn: Open Rank or Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow Position. Please send any questions to bioethics@nyu.edu.