Bioethics: Major Meetings in San Francisco, November 20-25

* The International Association of Bioethics will hold its III World Congress of Bioethics in San Francisco, November 22-24, 1996. This meeting occurs every two years. It is presented by the Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics (at the Law Center at University of Southern California), on behalf of the International Association of Bioethics and the American Association of Bioethics.

Several other bioethics meetings are also happening in San Francisco around that time:

* American Association of Bioethics Annual Meeting, November 20-22;

* The International Bioethics Summit of National Bioethics Advisory Bodies, November 21, 1996;

* First International Conference on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, November 24-25;

* Studying Human Genetic Diversity: Can We Do It Right?, November 25;

* The Globalization of Bioethics: International Human Rights and the Health Professions, November 25;

* Second International Meeting of the Network on Defining Death: A Cross-National Perspective, November 25.

The headquarters for the Congress and related meetings is the Crowne Plaza Parc Fifty Five Hotel in San Francisco.

Detailed programs and other information are available at http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/1vol2/231/bioethics.html  For a brochure of the Bioethics Congress, call the Pacific Center at 213/740-2541.

Comment: There are few AIDS-related sessions (there are sessions on gay issues), and few AIDS activists in San Francisco know about these meetings. Somehow the two communities of AIDS and bioethics are surprisingly separate. At the least, this situation represents lost opportunities, as there are many issues (around access to treatment, for example, or clinical trials, or the press and medical/scientific journals) which could use more ethical review. At worst, this apparent disconnect could be dangerous, as there are efforts to roll back patient empowerment in favor of more authoritarian approaches to public health.