AIMS OF THE CONFERENCE

The boundaries between bioethics, health law, and human rights are increasingly blurred. These three domains become conceptually and operationally inseparable parts of the same trend towards ensuring respect for the human person in the biomedical field. The major public health issues that we face today can be better addressed if all three disciplines work together. Bioethics can contribute to this interdisciplinarity by accepting its Nuremberg roots and by actively engaging in a health and human rights agenda.

The human rights language is a great advantage to the construction of a universal bioethics. The central concepts that human rights are universal, inalienable, and linked to human dignity have been well articulated, widely endorsed, and publicly embraced. Consequently, harnessing the moral and rhetorical force of human rights language commands international attention to bioethics issues that impact human rights.

The aims of this Conference are to address the interaction between human rights issues and bioethics; to explore common ethical values to facilitate a cross-cultural dialogue, and to discuss to what extent human rights can play the role of a lingua franca for international bioethics.

In addition, medical humanities offer a powerful way to convey an understanding the values that shape the doctor-patient relationship. Also the European Biomedicine Convention is a very helpful document to explore these values with its special emphasis on human dignity and human rights. Lastly bioethics in conflicting issues in healthcare policy-making, in social justice and inequalities, population policy and gender policies claim to put forth novel and fruitful topics of discussion, all by keynote lectures and presentations. (Courtesy for Dr.Roberto Andorno).

SCOPE OF THE CONFERENCE

The program of the conference includes plenary sessions as well as parallel sessions. Persons wishing to present oral and poster papers at the conference are invited to submit an abstract addressing the ethical dimensions of the conference topics (500 words maximum) before March 1, 2011. Papers will be selected from the abstracts by the Conference Scientific Committee.

HOST OF THE CONFERENCE

In 2011 the Turkish Bioethics Association and the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics (EACME) will organise the EACME Annual Conference. The Turkish Bioethics Association will be the co-ordinator and the host of the event.

LANGUAGE

Offcial language of the congress is English.