Cumberland Law School's Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics

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Cumberland School of Law in 2006

The Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics is a research center of Cumberland School of Law located on the Samford University campus in Birmingham, Alabama. It was founded in December of 2003. Professor David M. Smolin serves as director for the Center.

This center is the only one of its kind in the United States and takes its approach to current bioethical issues through "rigorous analysis, reliable information, and [from] multiple perspectives." [1]

The Center maintains an office and library at the law school. Two fellows, and several assistant researchers serve for one year terms.

1 Purpose
2 Symposium topics
3 Current and prior fellows
4 Current and prior research associates
5 Cumberland Law School's relevant courses
6 Further information

[edit] Purpose

Research focuses on current bioethical dilemmas. A majority of the Center's planning and time involves research, writing and coordinating the Center's Annual Symposium (see listing below), which is typically co-sponsored by the Cumberland Law Review. For the past several years an issue of the Cumberland Law Review has been devoted to the Symposium topic.

The Symposiums attempt to offer a broad range of views and seek solutions to problems, rather than tedious opinionated debate. The Center also seeks the best qualified experts to speak on a given topic.

Typically guest speakers can find accomodations within a quarter of a mile from campus. In prior conferences one of the Fellows of the Center picks up or hosts a speaker during the event. Speakers will often give a main presentation and then be asked to moderate a session or hold a question and answer session depending on the type of issue the speaker will present to the audience. Speakers also are invited to write papers which are published in a Law Review dedicated to the Symposium.

[edit] Symposium topics

Feb., 2007 - The United States Health Care System: Access, Equity, and Efficiency

Feb., 2006 - Biofuels and the New Energy Economy

Mar., 2005 - Bioethics Methodology - Does the Field of Bioethics Provide Answers or Expertise? - An Exploration of Secular and Religious Methodologies

Mar., 2004 - Genetically Modified Foods - National and Global Implications of Genetically Modified Organisms: Law, Ethics & Science.

[edit] Health Care Access, Equity, and Efficiency, 2007

website

This Conference was free and open to the public and was hosted on Thursday February 22, 2007 at Cumberland School of Law. The keynote speaker of the Conference was United States Representative Artur Davis (D) who spoke about the need for change in the current health care delivery system in the United States. His speech was delivered in part as a presentation of the Thurgood Marshall Lecture series sponsored by the Black Law Students Association at Cumberland.

The sponsors for the Symposium included the Center for Biotechnology, Law, and Ethics, Cumberland Law School, Samford University, the Cumberland Law Review, and Cumberland Law School's Chapter of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA)

It included five panels:

Overview - L.Jack Nelson of Cumberland School of Law
Equity is Efficient - John Nyman, Professor of Economics, University of Minnesota
A Thurgood Marshall Lecture - U.S. Representative Artur Davis (D)
Health Care Disparities: Race and Poverty - Dr. Camara Jones, CDC, and Sidney D. Watson, Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law
Solutions - John V. Jacobi, Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School, and Dr. Robert Ohsfeldt, Professor, Texas A & M School of Rural Public Health.

[edit] Biofuels and the New Energy Economy, 2006

This Conference was free and open to the public and was hosted on Monday, February 10, 2006 at Cumberland School of Law. The conference analyzed the role of biofuels as a supplement to the petroleum-based economy in both the utility and transportation sectors. It included six panels and two question and answer sessions. The panels were:

The Traditional Energy Economy,
Energy Policy: A Human Rights Perspective,
Global Climate Change and Energy Policy,
National Security, Cost and Environmental Analysis of Bioenergy ,
A Strategy for Developing Stationary Biodiesel Electric Generation, Challenges and
Opportunities in Developing Bioenergy Alternatives.

The participants were John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Michael Dworkin, director of Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment, Karl R. Rabago, president of Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association, David M. Smolin, director of Cumberland Law School's Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics, Michael J. Smolin, PE, principal of EXL Group, LLC, and Jacqueline Lang Weaver, professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

[edit] Bioethics Methodology, 2005

This Conference was free and open to the public and was hosted on Monday, March 14, 2005 at Cumberland School of Law. The conference analyzed how secular and religious methodologies answered the previously mentioned bioethical dilemmas. The impetus for the Conference sprang from three common criticisms of the field of Bioethics that "1) basic principles of bioethics are vague and indeterminate, and provide no real answers to bioethics dilemmas...2) there is no real expertise in the field but merely the subjective answers of individual bioethicists and...3) that the mainstream bioethics field has some of the "wrong" answers to basic bioethical dilemmas..."

It included three panels:

Alternative Reproduction Technologies,

Death and Dying, and

Children as Research Subjects - Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute.

The participants were Professors Janet Dolgin of Hofstra School of Law. L. Jack Nelson III of Cumberland School of Law, Larry I. Palmer the chair of urban health policy at the University of Louisville, Lois Shepherd of Florida State University College of Law and David M. Smolin of Cumberland School of Law.

The Conference was sponsored by Cumberland School of Law's Center for Bioetechnology, Law and Ethics, the Cumberland Law Review and Cumberland School of Law.

[edit] Genetically Modified Foods, 2004

This Conference was free and open to the public and was hosted on Monday, March 31, 2004 at the Bradley Lecure Center, Children's Harbor Building of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

It included six panels:

Four World views on Genetically Modified Food, or Greenpeace versus Monsanto,

Genomics-Guided Agricultural Biotechnology: Seeking a Less Politically Volatile Approach to GMO Development,

GMOs as an International Trade Issue: Using the World Trade Organization to Resolve an International Public Policy Conflict,

Can GMOs Help Developing Countries in their Quest for Food Security?,

The Promise and Peril of GM Agriculture in the Developing World: What Will Become of Traditional Agriculture Knowledge?, and

Andhra Pradesh, India, as a Case Study in Perspectives on GMOs.

The participants were Gregory Pence, Ph. D. of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, David E. Adelman, J.D., Ph.d. of the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona, Marsha Echols, J.D., LL.M., J.S.D., of Howard University School of Law, Charles R. McManis, J.D., of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, C.S. Prakash, Ph. D., of the Tuskegee University, David M. Smolin, J.D, of Cumberland School of Law, and Elizabeth Bowles, J.D. candidate, of Cumberland School of Law.

The Conference was presented by Cumberland Law School's Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics, the Cumberland Law Review and the Center for Ethics & Values in the Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.