Synopsis:
This week’s Grand Rounds launches the 14th National Paediatric Bioethics Centre conference, The Ethics of Innovation. The keynote opening address will be given by Associate Professor Bryanna Moore, Dept of Bioethics & Health Humanities, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston, Texas, USA.
From the invention of the wheel, the telephone and the light bulb, to the first computer, innovation has been inextricably tied up with human curiosity and our tendency to think about and try new and better ways of doing things. In medicine, advances such as vaccine technology, the development of pharmaceuticals and data gathering and processing methods, to the completion of the human genome project, have impacted the health of generations, arguably for the better. Yet innovation raises important questions about who scientific “breakthroughs” serve and what values drive such “progress”. This presentation explores the relationship between bioethics and innovation. It considers the role of ethics in innovation and team science, and proposes a framework for a “bioethics of innovation” in paediatric research and practice. It concludes with a reflection on what doing “innovative bioethics” might entail.
Speaker:
Associate Professor Bryanna Moore is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. She directs the clinical ethics fellowship and is chair of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities’ Pediatric Ethics Affinity Group. She received her PhD in Philosophy from Monash University, before completing postdoctoral fellowships at Children’s Mercy Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine in the United States. Her research interests span paediatric ethics, medical decision-making, virtue ethics, and death studies. Her work has been published in a range of forums, most recently the Hastings Center Report, Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, and American Journal of Bioethics. Her current work focuses on two main areas: applying philosophical and qualitative methods to better understand parents’ experiences and perspectives regarding their child’s care, and community-engaged ethics initiatives within clinical ethics programs. She has experience teaching a broad range of learners on topics including introductory philosophy and ethics, paediatric ethics, clinical ethics consultation methods, political philosophy, and perspectives on dying and death.