Families Matter

Ethically, Legally, and Clinically
Program
We often talk, in bioethics, about individual autonomy. Yet our most challenging ethical, legal and clinical controversies in health care often center around family roles and responsibilities: How should we handle parents’ refusals of medically recommended treatment or, conversely, parents’ requests to medicate or surgically alter their children? What should be known, and by whom, about a child’s genome, especially when genetic information effects other family members? What weight should be given to family interests in decisions about a child’s health care? How should we think about 3-parent embryos? Gamete donors? Gestational mothers? What rights and responsibilities should fathers have with regard to decisions about abortion and adoption, for example, as well as health care decisions for their offspring? Health care decisions might be messier, but maybe they would also be better if we gave more attention to family matters, and how families matter.
This multidisciplinary program was developed to inform and deliberate with ethicists, health care providers, attorneys and the public about changes in conceptions of the family and medical technologies and practices that challenge moral conventions and contemporary law. Faculty experts and participants engaged in thoughtful discussion regarding a broad range of ethical and legal issues that arise from new ways of creating and new ways of understanding families and providing health care for expectant parents, growing fetuses, infants, children, adolescents….and their families.
Target Audience
Objectives
Agenda
Wednesday, March 18
12:00 – 1:00pm, Registration
1:00 – 1:10pm, Welcome and Introduction
1:10 – 2:30pm, Changes and Challenges in the Concept of Family
2:30 – 4:15, Clinical, Ethical, and Legal Aspects of Innovative Reproduction
4:15 – 5:00, Reception and Open Forum
5:00 – 6:30, Open Forum: Family Planning: The Economics, Ethics, and Government Regulation of Family Planning
Panel Talkback:
Thursday, March 19
All panels and sessions will include time for Q & A.
8:00 – 8:30, Breakfast
A continental breakfast will be provided.
8:30 – 10:30am, Children’s Health – Whose Responsibility?
10:30 – 10:45am, Break
10:45am – 12:15pm, Whole Genome Sequencing of Fetuses and Newborns
Panel Talkback:
12:15 – 12:30pm, Break to Pick Up Lunch
A bagged lunch will be provided.
12:30 – 1:15pm, Small Luncheon Group Case Discussions
1:15 – 1:30pm, Break
1:30 – 3:00pm, Balancing Children’s Interests, Parental Preferences, and Medical Recommendations
3:00 – 3:15pm, Break
3:15 – 4:15pm, Concurrent Sessions
4:15 – 4:30pm, Break
4:30 – 5:30pm, Concurrent Sessions (Continued)
5:30 – 6:30pm, Networking Reception
Friday, March 20
All panels and sessions will include time for Q & A.
8:00 – 8:30am, Breakfast
A continental breakfast will be provided.
8:30 – 11:00am, The Role of Families in Health Care
11:00 – 11:15am, Break
11:15am – 12:15pm, Concurrent Sessions
12:15 – 1:30pm, Lunch
1:30 – 2:30pm, Concurrent Sessions (continued)
2:30 – 2:45pm, Break
2:45 – 3:40pm, Shared Decision-Making – Rhetoric or Reality?
3:40 – 4:00pm, Closing Remarks
Cosponsored by the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.