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Ethics Grand Rounds

The Department of Bioethics hosts Ethics Grand Rounds four times per year. Ethics Grand Rounds is designed to provide a venue to learn about and discuss important issues in bioethics. The sessions for the 2023 – 2024 academic year are listed below. Sessions run from noon-1pm and are live-streamed to the public via NIH Videocast.

October 4, 2023

Ethics of NIH researchers using Large Language Models
Presenter: Nick Asendorf, PhD, Scientific Information Officer, NHLBI
Discussant: David Magnus, PhD, Thomas A. Raffin Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Ethics; Director, Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics

December 6, 2023

The ethics of "other" motivations for seeking care and enrolling in research
Presenter: David Wendler, PhD, Department of Bioethics, NIH Clinical Center
Discussant: William Gahl, MD, PhD, Senior Investigator, NHGRI

February 7, 2024

Supported decision-making in research
Discussant: Nina A. Kohn, JD, David M. Levy Professor of Law Syracuse University College of Law; Distinguished Scholar in Elder Law Solomon Center for Health Law & Politics Yale Law School

April 3, 2024

Respect for the dead
Discussant: Neal Dickert, MD, PhD, Thomas R. Williams Professor of Medicine, Emory University

Previous Topics

April 5, 2023

Is it Ethical to Appeal to Research Participants' Altruism?
Presenter: Beth Kozel MD, PhD, Lasker Clinical Research Scholar, NHLBI. Discussant: Alex Voorhoeve PhD; Head, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics.

February 1, 2023

How to Make Vaccines: Should the Information be Publicly Available?
Presenter: Maria Elena Bottazzi PhD, Co-Director, Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. Discussant: Ezekiel Emanuel MD, PhD, Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania.

December 7, 2022

Should Research Participants Share in the Profits?
Presenter: Patrizia Farci MD, Senior Researcher, NIAID. Discussant: Glenn Cohen JD, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, Harvard Law School.

September 28, 2022

The Ethics of Care and Research with Individuals in Custody
Presenter: David Lang MD, MPH, Chief, Office of Patient Safety and Clinical Quality, NIH Clinical Center. Discussant: Stephen Rosenfeld MD, MBA, Executive Director and Chair, North Star Review Board.

April 7, 2021

Using Left-over Clinical Samples for Research: When is it Ethical?
Discussant: I. Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Director of Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy Biotechnology, and Bioethics. Case Presenter: James K. Gilman, MD, Chief Executive Officer, Clinical Center

February 3, 2021

The Ethics of Contact Tracing During a Pandemic
Discussant: Nancy Kass, ScD, Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education, and Phoebe R. Berman Professor of Bioethics and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University. Case Presenter: Andrew Mannes MD, ME, Chief, Department of Perioperative Medicine, NIH Clinical Center

December 2, 2020

The Ethics of Contact Tracing During a Pandemic
Case Presenter: Michael Parker, PhD, Director, Welcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and Director, Ethox Centre, University of Oxford.

October 7, 2020

Vaccine trials for COVID-19: is there an obligation to offer the first vaccine shown to be effective to all participants?
Discussants: Joe Millum, CC Department of Bioethics and Steve Goodman, Stanford University. Case Presenter: Emily Erbelding, NIAID

April 1, 2020

Prospect of Benefit and Moral Distress
Discussant: Douglas B. White, Vice Chair and Professor of Critical Care Medicine, UPMC Endowed Chair for Ethics and Decision Making in Critical Illness. Case Presenter: Alexander Freeman, NIAID

February 5, 2020

Capacity to Consent
Discussant: Paul Abbelbuam, MD, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine and Law, Director, Division of Law, Ethics and Psychiatry, Columbia University. Case Presenter: Christa Zerbe, MD, NIAID

December 4, 2019

Pre-Natal Treatment
Discussant: Larry McCullough, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics, Baylor College of Medicine, Professor of Bioethics, Lecturer, Proseminar Health and Human Values, The Bioethics Program. Case Presenter: Diana Bianchi, NICHD

October 2, 2019

Public/Private Partnerships
Discussant: Bill Sage, James R. Dougherty Chair of Faculty Excellence, Professor (Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care). Case Presenter: Les Biesecker, NHGRI

April 3, 2019

Conflicts Between Patients' Religious Beliefs and Their Clinical Interests
Discussant: Farr Curlin, MD, Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities, Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine and; Co-Director, Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative, Duke University.

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

How Should We Handle Challenging Surrogates?
Discussant: Dan Brudney, PhD, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago and Associate Faculty, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, The University of Chicago Medicine. Case Presenter: Sameer Kadri, MD, MS, Associate Research Physician; Head, Clinical Epidemiology Section, Critical Care Medicine Department, CC

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Capacity to Give Consent
Discussant: Paul S. Applebaum, MD, Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine and Law, Columbia University. Case Presenter: Christa Zerbe, MD, Staff Clinician, Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology, NIAID

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

The Ethics of Including Pregnant Women in Vaccine Research
Discussant: Maggie Little, BPhil, PhD, Senior Research Scholar, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University. Case Presenter: Karin Bok, MS, PhD, Senior Advisor, Vaccine Development, Office of the Director, Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Assessing the Risks of Involving Medical Trainees in Patient Care: Should We Conduct Randomized Trials?
Discussant: Peter Angelos, MD, PhD, Linda Kohler Anderson Professor of Surgery and Surgical Ethics and Chief, Endocrine Surgery; Associate Director, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, University of Chicago Medicine Case Presenter: Derek Braverman, BA, Yale University and Former Fellow, Bioethics Department and Medical Student, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Wednesday, December 6th, 2017

Who Should Apologize for Medical Mistakes?
Discussant: Rebecca Dresser JD, MS, Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law and Professor of Ethics in School of Medicine, Washington University, St. Louis. Case Presenter: Laura M. Lee, MS, RN, Director, Office of Patient Safety and Clinical Quality, NIH Clinical Center

Wednesday, October 4th, 2017

Research on Pediatric Biospecimens: Is Reconsent Necessary?
Discussant: Jonathan Berg MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Genetics, University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill. Case Presenters: Robert Tamburro, MD, MSc, Medical Officer, Pediatric Trauma and Critical Illness Branch, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Benjamin Berkman, JD, MPH, NIH Department of Bioethics and Deputy Director, National Human Genome Research Institute Bioethics Core