In 2009, The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity launched the Global Bioethics Education Initiative (GBEI) through a generous gift from an anonymous donor. It was envisioned as a means through which to broaden CBHD’s global impact by investing in international leaders and scholars in the field of bioethics in order to contribute to the advancement of Christian bioethical reflection and engagement. Since its inception, GBEI has sponsored seven international scholars to come to the Center for one month of concentrated research and application to their context.
Several years ago a key growth area identified by the Center’s staff was developing a sustained means for CBHD to facilitate international engagement with the bioethical issues that were developing beyond a narrowly Western context. Looking back over the Center’s history, a concerted effort to interact with globally has been identifiable since the beginning, but the majority of the questions that were being addressed arose out of either domestic concerns or topics being raised predominantly in the UK and the Netherlands. GBEI was conceived as a way of filling this need by addressing the pressing issues that face non-Western countries through sponsoring bioethicists to pursue the questions that they discern as most urgent within their own contexts.
The initiative has three goals: the first is to provide the opportunity for a month of concentrated research on the scholar’s proposed topic. The initiative provides the recipients with the chance to give attention to some of the deeper issues that their normal schedule may not allow them to pursue, through the use of the Center’s library and resources, and through dialoging and collaborating with the staff. The initiative covers transportation, housing, and meal costs while the recipients are at the Center.
The second goal is to encourage the recipient in their pursuits from the perspective of engaging as Christian bioethicists, as many of the recipients are a minority because of their faith commitments, and work in isolated environments. In this way GBEI seeks to encourage the recipients by connecting them with other scholars in their field who are committed to Judeo-Christian Hippocratism at the annual summer conference, by building a network of international scholars through the GBEI program, and by providing complimentary CBHD member benefits for up to five years to support their continued access to Christian bioethics resources (including both Dignitas and the journal Ethics & Medicine).
We at CBHD believe that scholarship happens in community—in question, dialogue, and response, and GBEI is structured to promote this kind of scholarship. GBEI seeks to make available to the recipient a community of Christian scholars both for their encouragement and for constructive, critical engagement with their work.
Finally, the third goal is to facilitate the integration of the scholar’s biblical and theological commitments with their research; this is accomplished by providing tools to assist the researcher in discerning how a distinctly Christian view of life and the world informs their vocation and the ethical decision-making process.
Ultimately, the purpose of the initiative is not to replicate CBHD or to export it to other international contexts. In some cases the questions that are being raised internationally differ in content and in scope from the issues prevalent in Western discussions, and thus require engagement that is culturally sensitive, academically rigorous, and faithfully Christian. Cloning CBHD—even if it were ethically permissible—would not adequately address the complex questions that are being raised in global bioethics. This is why the focus of GBEI from the beginning has been on cultivating an environment that promotes the incoming scholar’s own work, and facilitates their research through the Center’s resources and professional network.
Five years in, a survey of the results of the initiative show it to have been successful in meeting these goals, and it has even provided some unexpected benefits along the way. For example, the Center sponsored two follow-up initiatives with our first two scholars. The first was a grant to Dr. Jameela George to fund a bioethics consultation in Chennai, India entitled “Christian Responses to Ethical Issues in Healthcare Practice.” The second was a grant to Dr. Megan Best to pursue research in reproductive ethics, resulting in a multi-national study examining attitudes and use of assisted reproductive technologies among church attendees, and also in her recent book Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.
One unexpected benefit has been the impact of the GBEI’s scholars’ presence on the students in the MA in Bioethics program at Trinity—it has given them greater exposure to the bioethical dilemmas being raised globally and an increased motivation to consider more than just domestic concerns when engaging the questions of our day. GBEI was also the inspiration behind an initiative to provide library resource kits to international universities, to encourage and promote Christian bioethical engagement. The library resource sets contain copies of Dignitas, books produced by the Center, along with other volumes written by individuals affiliated with the work of CBHD. These resources have been sent to college, university, and seminary libraries in Canada, Slovakia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Thailand, Nigeria, India, and the Philippines.
However, these success are not without a cost. It is clear that CBHD has hit upon a real need that can be met by the Center’s resources, a need that was originally funded by the gift of an anonymous donor. The Center would like to continue investing in global leaders in bioethics, and can only do so through the generosity of our supporters and partners. Would you consider making this possible?
Going forward, we have high hopes for the initiative: we would like to see all geographical regions represented—to that end, we are actively searching for candidates from Latin America, the Middle East, and the Far East. Ideally we would like to sponsor two scholars at a time; scholarship does not happen in isolation, and having the recipients’ time overlap allows them to interact and dialog with each other as well as to utilize the resources of the Center.
This summer we were able to reconnect with a number of our previous GBEI candidates in order to hear how their work was developing and to hear their reflections on how the initiative impacted them. Their stories reflect a wide range of research interests and projects, but a common theme can be found in each: GBEI is achieving its intended goals.
At present my main focus is completing my PhD on the spiritual needs of patients. I have had two papers published, and am about to submit a review of suffering in the medical literature. Meanwhile, I always enjoy opportunities to teach, and I am helping to develop the course in spirituality at the University of Sydney, where I have a position as a Clinical senior lecturer. I take opportunities to educate the public on bioethical issues and give talks, (end-of-life issues are currently big over here) and have just submitted a chapter on the ethics of antenatal screening for an upcoming book on the fallacies of feminism. Antenatal screening is also the topic of the latest paper for the Christian Medical and Dentist Fellowship of Australia Ethics Committee, of which I am chair.
I have just started supervising a student for a bioethics subject at seminary, and I hope this will be an ongoing activity as I continue to encourage the next generation of bioethicists. I will soon be travelling to Orlando, Florida to run some workshops at The Gospel Coalition 2014 Women’s Conference on contraception and screening in pregnancy. Then I am off to Canada to speak at the 2014 annual meeting of the Canadian Scientific & Christian Affiliation, the American Scientific Affiliation (U.S.A.), and Christians in Science (U.K.). But the big event of the year will be the marriage of our eldest daughter in October! Needless to say, I am taking a bit of time off from my usual work as a palliative care physician.
As part of my PhD, I recently graduated with a Graduate Diploma in Qualitative Health Research, which has given me the expertise to conduct ongoing research myself. I am looking forward to analysing the results from an international survey I conducted with the help of The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity, and continuing to contribute research from a Christian perspective to mainstream journals. It has been interesting to be involved in the contraception debate currently running in the U.S., and my expertise in this area came as a result of research for my first book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, which was written with help from my Global Bioethics Education Initiative grant. I am very grateful for the opportunities that have come from my association with CBHD and the GBEI which have enriched my own understanding of bioethics and enabled me to engage with my international colleagues.
The annual summer conference and GBEI training program offer a vibrant opportunity for students, professionals, religious leaders and other groups to interact and figure out what bioethics is and how bioethicists think. The possibility is a real chance for encounters, engagement, scientific exchange, cooperation and partnership building. It is a veritable global village where communities of influence meet to generate momentum in bioethics.
For me, coming from Cameroon, a part of Africa where bioethics is still emerging, where its discourse is still narrowly focused and its views marginalized and alienated from the mainstream, it was the a real opportunity to meet in person such great minds and leading scholars in bioethics like the late Edmund D. Pellegrino, to discuss on several occasions over dinner with Tristram Engelhardt, Robert D. Orr, Kevin T. FitzGerald, Dennis P. Hollinger, Daniel Sulmasy, Clarretta Yvonne Dupree, C. Christopher Hook, Dönal O’Mathüna from Ireland, Joseph Tham of Regina Apostolorum University, Rome, and some of the most influential bioethicists in the world. As a Global Bioethics Education Initiative Scholar, I was offered office space at the Center, access to libraries and internet resources and this facilitated the writing and publication of my work “Bioethics and the Challenges to its Growth in Africa.” As a researcher and lecturer, it has enhanced my research career and teaching capacity in bioethics enormously.
CBHD is one of the most influential and leading think tanks that uses its infrastructure and facility to drive awareness and energize bioethics discussion and education around the globe. It is gradually building capacities and empowering a growing amount of bioethics scholars and professionals with the knowledge and skills to engage in critical bioethical inquiry on the emerging challenging issues of life that offend human dignity, in order to drive forward the bioethics discourse. It is a leading center for excellence, professionalization, and career development. It is one of the most ideal places for training and career enhancement in bioethics properly equipped with the best resources including books, journals, and professional staff prepared to train and empower the next generation of bioethicists.
Early last year, I was invited by the Department of Science and Technology to be part of the Philippine Health Research Ethics Board (PHREB), a national policy making body in health research ethics. Currently, I am undergoing a training program under PHREB and FERCAP (Forum for Ethical Review Committees in Asia and the Western Pacific), which will equip me to accredit, survey, and evaluate other ethics review boards in the near future. In between sitting as a member of the Ethics Review Committee of our institution and teaching at the Graduate School, I give lectures at some hospitals that provide continuing education in bioethics to their physicians.
Dignity, professionalism, respect—an atmosphere of shared aims but with sincere respect for individual beliefs. This ethos I experienced at CBHD serves as one of my guiding principles in the field of bioethics.
I have been serving as the director of the department of Christian education of the Church of South India, Tirunelveli Diocese, which is the research and education wing of the diocese. I am also currently pursuing my PhD in the history of medicine at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. I was very happy to be part of the CBHD as GBEI scholar and it helped me a lot to learn and grow in an international and Christian domain in bioethics. I have also benefited from the Ethics and Medicine journal.
When I came to CBHD in 2009, I had done an MIRB from Australia. My time and interactions with Paige, Mike, and others helped me to integrate Christian values and perspectives to the secular Bioethics teaching I had already received. To begin with I conducted a National workshop in India, on “Christian Responses to Ethical Issues in Health Care” in January of 2010. In 2011 we had a week-long workshop in Delhi in which Paige was one of the main presenters. Following these I have been able to speak at a number of workshops and conferences.
Furthermore, supported by a generous grant from an anonymous donors, five Indian doctors are enrolled in the MA Bioethics at Trinity, for which I am the national coordinator. Last year we registered “The Centre for Bioethics” founded by 15 Christian organizations here in India. This was a Herculean task completed by God’s grace and guidance.
Currently I am working towards developing a post graduate diploma in bioethics in partnership with Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore. We have just finalized the content and have a long way to go. I am waiting to hear from CMC whether this partnership has been accepted. Once this is accepted, I will need to focus a lot of my time to write the content of the program as a distance education program.
