The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (CBHD) is a Christian bioethics research center at Trinity International University that explores the nexus of biomedicine, biotechnology, and our common humanity. CBHD fosters a distinctly Christian conception of bioethics that is both academically rigorous and broadly accessible.
Distinguished speakers will examine foundational concepts and bioethical considerations related to the myriad of ways in which these crucial ideas play out in healthcare and other settings.
Workshops and paper sessions will explore additional issues from among the wide spectrum of traditional and emerging bioethical topics, ranging from beginning-of-life issues and dilemmas in clinical ethics to reproductive and genetic ethics, disability ethics, emerging technology assessment, historical analyses, philosophical foundations, policy considerations, and legal implications.
The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity’s annual conference is the leading venue for Christian bioethical engagement, providing opportunities for equipping and education, professional development and academic engagement, as well as networking for professionals, researchers, policymakers, educators, and students across a variety of disciplines and professional contexts.
Conference Objectives:
Identify the prospects and challenges for the evolving landscape of bioethical engagement within the context of shifting global and societal realities and advances in medicine and biotechnology.
Explore & discuss the ethical implications of recent developments in medicine, science, and technology with respect to our individual and common humanity.
Evaluate contemporary bioethical discourses in light of ethical approaches that include philosophical, religious, and other perspectives from the medical humanities.
Promote interdisciplinary engagement on pressing bioethical issues.
The theme for this, our 30th annual conference, is The Christian Stake in Bioethics Revisited: Crucial Issues of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. This title hearkens back to our very first conference, The Christian Stake in Bioethics, held in May of 1994 and officially launching The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity. That conference grew out of two days of meetings on the Trinity International University campus discussing the field of bioethics and what might be done by evangelical Christians specifically. The meeting’s attendees agreed that the time was ripe to further evangelical bioethical engagement, and it was determined that the best way to do so was to develop “some sort of center to mobilize that engagement, to enable people to work across professional, denominational, institutional lines. To be able to do genuinely Christian engagement with these issues.” Genuinely Christian engagement has indeed been the work of the Center. For this year’s conference, we will review the ground that has been covered, examine where the field of bioethics stands today, and look ahead to the challenge we will face as we continue forward. Plenary addresses will include: • The Inaugural Virtue Ethics Lecture • The History of CBHD and Evangelical Engagement with Bioethics • Bioethics & Science Fiction: Current Themes & Future Realities • The Past and Future of Advance Directives • Definitions of Death • Advice to Young Bioethicists • Bioethics Today, Yesterday, and Tomorrow Workshops and paper sessions will explore additional issues from among the wide spectrum of traditional and emerging bioethical topics. The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity’s annual conference is the leading venue for Christian bioethical engagement, providing opportunities for equipping and education, professional development and academic engagement, as well as networking for professionals, researchers, policymakers, educators, and students across a variety of disciplines and professional contexts.