Some of the world’s leading bioethicists will gather for a colloquium from July 29 to Aug. 3 at the University of Toronto’s St. Michael College, the organizers announce.
The meeting, «Culture of Life and Globalization: Challenges and Directions,» will address issues of end-of-life care, including euthanasia and palliative care, and explore the relationship between globalization and bioethics.
The International Colloquium of Representatives of Catholic Bioethics Centers is being sponsored by the Order of Malta.
«Science and technology seem to be the new ‘opium of the masses,'» says Dr. William Sullivan, director of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute at the University of Toronto, who is co-host of the international meeting with Dr. Noël Simard of Ottawa’s St. Paul University.
«We look to science to solve all our problems, but we have not gone far enough in asking the much tougher questions about what it means to be fully human,» Sullivan said. «At the end of the day, there is no ‘technical fix’ that will fully address human suffering and death.»
The Toronto meeting will bring together 40 representatives of Catholic bioethics institutes from Canada, the United States, Latin America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Joseph Boyle of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto will deliver the keynote address, on globalization and bioethics.
