CRCS and ICRS invite you all to attend to CRCS&ICRS Wednesday Forum. The forum will discuss about ?What is Natural Death? The Bioethical Implications of New Definitions of Death?. The speaker will be Prof. Christine Gudorf. The forum will be held on:
Date : Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Time : 12.30 pm ? 2.30 pm (free lunch)
Venue : Room 306, UGM Graduate School Jln. Teknika Utara Pogung Yogyakarta
The forum is free of charge. Please invite your friends to join it. Below is the abstract and the short bibliography of the speaker.
Abstract:
This presentation will look at the use of technology in medicine (artificial nutrition and hydration, respirators, pacemakers, etc) and how they are complicating definitions of death. The problem I will deal with is recent Catholic documents from the Vatican that require artificial nutrition, hydration and respiration pretty much regardless of circumstances if they are at all available. Doctors cannot refuse, nor patients reject these if necessary to preserve life, regardless of whether the patient is dying or not. The status of developing nations in this teaching is a big part of my critique.
About the speaker:
My teaching, research and publication today are generally restricted to ethics and religion in the western world during the last millennium. I have focused on contemporary ethical and religious questions within and between Christianity, Judaism, Islam and varied tribal religions. In the 1990s, I have been particularly involved in religious and ethical issues around development programs in poor nations, primarily Latin America and Africa, but including some Asian nations ( China , Korea , India and Indonesia ). Those development issues include fertility rates, health, education, the status of women, as well as trade, technology transfer and indebtedness. These interests have developed directly out of my education. I received a BS/BA from Indiana University with majors in Classics, Religion, and Secondary Education in Social Studies. My MA, MPhil and PhD were in Religious Social Ethics from Columbia University in a joint program with Union Theological Seminary. My dissertation was published by University Press of America in 1980 as Catholic Social Teaching on Liberation Themes. Since then I have published six books and nearly a hundred articles and chapters on a wide variety of topics in religion and ethics, including medical ethics, feminism, theological dissent and Christian spirituality. I have been a visiting prof at US and international universities, am a co-editor of the journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Second Opinion, and The Journal of Religious Ethics, and review books and manuscripts for many others. In December 1999 I completed the coursework for a second doctorate, this one in comparative sociology at FIU. I have begun work on a new casebook in environmental ethics; the first of a series of articles on postmodernism in ethics has been accepted in the JAAR; others have been submitted to other journals. (http://religion. fiu.edu/People/ Faculty/gudorf. htm)
