Extreme Ethics Conference

UM's Ethics Programs coordinated the initial Extreme Ethics conferences under a three-year NIH grant, awarded for the development of tools to consider under-addressed and exceptionally difficult problems in human subjects research and epidemiology. Ken Goodman and Arturo Brito were PIs on the grant.

Extreme Ethics topics included ethics and biostatistics, the social goals of public health research, scientists as advocates, exceptionally difficult IRB protocols, bioinformatics, issues in occupational and environmental health, research in genetically isolated communities and the foundations and history of human-subjects research ethics.

Conference attendance outstripped expectations and included many foreign attendees. The meetings led to a special invitation to present a spin-off course at the joint meeting of the American College of Epidemiology and the Society for Epidemiologic Research in Toronto in 2001, and to the publication of an ensemble of articles based on Extreme Ethics topics, forthcoming in the journal Professional Ethics. We hope to continue the Extreme Ethics conferences in future years.