EMU set to talk Bioethics

Preparations are well underway for the Biology department's planned takeover of campus Thursday evening: the Ethics of Biotechnology conference.

Drawn by an offer of free pizza, student volunteers spent Monday evening stuffing information packets for conference attendees, and professors in every department have assigned their students to write up responses to the scheduled events.

Classes are cancelled Friday so that EMU students may attend the conference, which will feature speakers from a wide assortment of disciplines discussing the morality of emerging biological technologies such as genetic engineering, cloning, and stem cell therapy.

One of the main points of this conference is "to get the campus talking and thinking about their beliefs," said Barbara Rowan, director of the Lilly Grant Project. Lilly is one of the event's associate sponsors alongside the Anabaptist Center for Health Care Ethics and Mennonite Central Committee.

"I think we are better off if we stay as well-informed as possible," Associate Professor of Biology Ken Roth wrote in an explanatory article on the event's website, www.bioethics.emu.edu. "We are then more likely to make intelligent decisions, whether as voters, consumers, parents, educators or whatever."