Fifteenth Asian Bioethics Conference and Eighth Kumamoto Bioethics Roundtable, Beppu and Kumamoto, Japan, 1-9 November 2014

Visit of the participants to Nagasaki Peace Park to discuss ethics of nuclear weapons and peace.

Presidential address of Prof. Aamir Jafarey from Pakistan.

In Beppu

 In Kumamoto

The 15th Asian Bioethics Conference and AUSN Intensive Bioethics Training Workshop in Japan

Participants to Nagasaki Peace Park to discuss ethics of nuclear weapons and peace.From 1-10 November AUSN collaborated with the Asian Bioethics Association and Eubios Ethics Institute, with Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU), Beppu, Japan and Kumamoto University, in Kumamoto, Japan, to hold the 15th Asian Bioethics Conference (ABC15), which was a 10 day intensive conference, with many papers being presented and discussed.

2014 is 20 years after the first Asian Bioethics Conference that was held in Beijing, China. For the last 25 years Eubios Ethics Institute has been stimulating Asian bioethics, and for many years has been the secretariat of many efforts to develop dialogue for Asian and global bioethics. By developing descriptive, prescriptive and interactive forums and promoting fundamental research from the perspective of people in different countries around Asia and the Pacific region. The opening of dialogue with people from other developing countries is possible through conferences such as ABC15, which saw a hundred scholars come and present papers and dialogue with each other in plenary sessions, so that this family of Asian bioethics researchers could further develop and grow (For more information on the Asian Bioethics Association please look at the website: www.eubios.info/ABA.htm).

The Asian Bioethics Association board also welcomed the new president of the Asian Bioethics Association, Professor Miyako Takagi; and also listened to the presidential address of Prof. Aamir Jafarey from Pakistan (See picture). The linkage to AUSN is significant because it was at the Asian Bioethics Conference 2008, where I had invited Professor Thomas Gionis, and we met to discussed how we may collaborate in different ways to enhance education and ethics to transform the world. We pondered how to resolve challenges of ethics across different disciplines across different paradigms and to better implement public health programs. The 2008 ABC was hosted by the Indonesian National Bioethics Commission, and the first AUSN liaison office overseas is in Indonesia, where we have a double degree program as a Masters in Bioethics. By design AUSN is closely linked to bioethics around the world, and has from its start collaborated with the Asian Bioethics Association conference since its start in 2013 when the 14th ABC conference was held in Chennai India. The next conference in 2015 will be supported by Saint Paul’s University Quezon City in Manila, Philippines, which is an institution which also has a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with AUSN. It will be significant as we hope to enhance bioethics in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, as people continue the dialogue which has been developing over the last 20 years.

AUSN faculty are also very active in Asian ethics and this is not a coincidence, but a linkage of the work that I’ve been involved in the last 20 years in Asian bioethics, with the goal to make a global bioethics institution and a global program to address the needs of people in different parts of the world.

The AUSN Intensive Bioethics Training courses during ABC15 utilised the lectures being given by AUSN visiting professors during the conference to many participants who are also AUSN students, and we skyped in other students. There was also a chance for AUSN visiting professors to discuss joint research projects, and meet with the number of new students at that conference. This conference also counted as one of the intensive training programs that students in the combination hybrid Masters programs of AUSN (MPH and MBGPH) programs, need to undertake in order to graduate. If follows on from the intensive courses, held in AUSN Arizona and Indonesia in September 2014, with the launch of the AUSN-UNSOED Double Degree program. We have seen the great expansion of students from Asia in these programs.

France and Ethical Science

In the last week of October 2014 I also visited UNESCO Paris to meet with former colleagues and discuss possible collaborations, and introduce AUSN programs and purposes. I am a member of the AGREEN skills Ethics Commission, and we met in Meteo, Toulouse to discuss ways to enhance the ethics of young scientists that are supported by this program and the European Commission. The programme supports postdoctoral scholars from around the world to research in different countries to enhance international mobility. Many young scientists are sensitive to ethical issues, such as peer review and their roles in ensuring that future science is more ethical. I also had discussions with Judge Christian Byk, our AUSN visiting professor in France, about a forthcoming AUSN conference in France in 2015 that will be held in conjunction with the International Association of Law, Ethics and Science which we have a MOU with. Although in 2015 AUSN did not convene a conference in Europe, in 2016 we expect to hold several to build on the 2014 conferences there.