12th Annual Waggoner Lecture
Ethics, Genetics and
the Future of Sport
Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Ford Auditorium
Thomas H. Murray, Ph.D.
President of The Hastings Center, and Chair,
Ethnical Issues Review Panel, World Anti-Doping Agency
Barry Bonds. The Tour de France. The National Basketball Association betting scandal. Professional football's concussion controversy. What do all of these things have in common? They're the most highly visible, and widely discussed, examples of a range of current ethical issues involving sports and society. From steroids and game-fixing to the lingering physical effects of a competitive career, these issues and more are crucial to the future of sport around the world.
On Wednesday, October 10, a noted medical ethics expert will speak on how these issues, and others, affect our perceptions of the human body and how it can and should be used -- and abused -- for the sake of athletic achievement.
It's the 12th annual Waggoner Lecture on Ethics and Values in Medicine, sponsored by the U-M Department of Psychiatry. It will begin at 4 p.m. in Ford Auditorium at University Hospital and will be followed by a reception.
The speaker will be Thomas H. Murray, Ph.D., President of The Hastings Center, one of the nation's leading ethics "think tanks." He is also the Chair of the Ethical Issues Review Panel of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which promotes, coordinates, and monitors the fight against doping in sports in all its forms, as well as a past member of the US Olympic Committee’s Anti-Doping Committee, and the former director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University.
Earlier that same day, at 10:30 a.m. in the auditorium of the Rachel Upjohn Building, Dr. Murray will speak on another important ethics topic: care at the end of life. His talk, which will be the Psychiatry Grand Rounds lecture for the week, will be titled "The Choreography of Dying in Contemporary America".
The Hastings Center is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit bioethics research institute founded in 1969 to explore fundamental and emerging questions in medicine, health care, biotechnology. Much of the Center’s research addresses bioethics issues in three broad areas: care and decision making at the end of life, public health priorities, and new and emerging technologies. The Center draws on a world-wide network of experts, including an elected association of leading researchers called Hastings Center fellows. The Center also publishes The Hastings Center Report and IRB: Ethics & Human Research, which focus on scholarship and commentary in bioethics.