Going Too Far:
Rationalizing Unethical Medical Research in Japan, Germany, and the United States

University of Pennsylvania April 28-May 1, 2004

PRE-REGISTRATION NOW CLOSED. SEE UPDATE BELOW.
What do some of the most gruesome experiments of the 20th century have to teach us in the 21st as we today go forward assuming that human "progress" now lies largely in the domain of human biology and biotechnology? How did the infamous "Nazi doctors," the Japanese who vivisected human "logs" in China, and the U.S. Public Health Service performing the racist Tuskegee Experiment rationalize what they were doing? Germany, Japan, and the United States today have very advanced medical technologies and seem poised to carry out experiments that could re-design the human body. "Soft" eugenics promises to remove "bad" or even simply "unwanted" genes from our progeny.

This conference looks back at the past especially in order to face our uncertain future. It brings together experts on these topics from Japan, Germany, and the United States in order to examine how going "too far," even abominably too far, was rationalized in the past. But an unavoidable question to be faced by the participants and their audience will be whether or not biomedical research programs of the present may be, even if only in a piecemeal fashion, repeating the crimes of the past.

Registration $125 for the entire conference
$20 for individual lectures.

FREE to University of Pennsylvania
faculty, students and staff with Penn I.D.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conference Speakers
Gernot Böhme, Darmstadt
Arthur Caplan, Penn
Frederick Dickinson, Penn
Eric Feldman, Penn
Renée Fox, Penn
Andreas Frewer, Hannover
G. Cameron Hurst, Penn
Yoshihiko Komatsu, Tokyo
William LaFleur, Penn
Susan Lindee, Penn
Jonathan Moreno, Virginia
Benno Müller-Hill, Köln
Miho Ogino, Osaka
Susumu Shimazono, Tokyo
Kei’ichi Tsuneishi, Yokohama
Rolf Winau, Berlin
Tetsuo Yamaori, Kyoto

  

 

 

 

 
  Made possible with the generous support of the US Department of Education (Title VI), The US-Japan Friendship Commission, The International Research Center for Japanese Studies, and the following at the University of Pennsylvania: Special Fund of the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, The School of Medicine, The Penn Humanities Forum, The Saunders Council, Penn Lauder CIBER. Supporting departments at Penn have been History, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, German, Philosophy, History and Sociology of Science, and Religious Studies.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: PRE-REGISTRATION NOW CLOSED. Due to limited space and overwhelming response, pre-registration for the conference is now closed. Those who have not yet registered will be accommodated on a first-come basis after registrants are seated.

Updated: 4/23/04

 

Home Conference Schedule Accommodations Maps