What will the next generation of bioethicists look like? Well, if the 2009 NUBC is any indication it is likely to be more diverse and larger than the previous ones.
Over 300 undergraduate students from more than 60 institutions were in attendance. That’s a lot of budding bioethicists, if you ask me. Twenty-seven undergraduates presented, while the Harvard faculty gave plenary sessions on areas of their expertise. That’s enough presentations to fill an entire AJOB issue!
What does this say about the next generation of bioethicists? Even if a quarter of these students stay tangentially related to bioethics, there’s going to be a “baby boom” of bioethics. How will we train them? Where will they work? The answer is: I don’t have the answer–but someone better start thinking about it because as we simultaneously train dozens upon dozens of mid-career professionals in bioethics at the same time, while these students soon will become post-bacs looking to train in bioethics before going on to medical school and law school and want to be bioethicists too the explosion of bioethicists is going to be real, in my humble opinion.
Back to NUBC: UNC-Chapel Hill won the “Bioethics Bowl” competition besting 11 other teams. Princeton philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer talked about his new book, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. To see more about the conference, you can visit its website.
To keep up the discourse among the next generation of bioethicists, there is a new burgeoning bioethicists blog called emonk.org. With such provocative titles as “Is Peter Singer a Hypocrite?” (clearly written before attending NUBC!) and “What’s Wrong with Incest”, it’s certainly a blog that catches the readers attention.
Since we recently wrote about supporting undergraduate minorities interest in bioethics as a way of diversifying the field, I am happy to report (secondhand) that there was great diversity among the student attendees. Let’s hope to see these students attend ASBH in Washington DC in October.
If even half of these students come, ASBH might want to be sure that there’s a really large room reserved for the student reception during ASBH and the student affinity group as well.
Summer Johnson, PhD
**Thanks to Andrea Kalfoglou, PhD for providing many of the facts and the picture from NUBC for this story.