Writings published by Ann Boyd

Rector’s Seedlings:

Please see this month's (and previous months') Newsletters for Ann's Seedlings

Some Writings by Ann Boyd, Rector St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Poplar Springs, MD and Professor of Biology, Hood College

Publications carried in Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics

Works published here previously

Anagogy of Autonomy was written while a close friend was dying. She had cancer that was only diagnosed after it was in a very advanced stage. Accompanying her through the stages of diagnosis, chemotherapy, and dying, listening as she struggled to make moral choices that were consistent with her faith taught me a lot about what autonomy means as process and as such it is not at all what the docmentation of consent as a form of permission posits. She read and reacted to this article which was given after she died at an international meeting in Japan and subsequently published in EUBIOS (2000).

In 2002 I published Genetics and Social Justice also in EUBIOS after giving the talk in an international bioethics meeting. This paper expresses some of the concerns about medical technology in our time pressing an agenda that seems more motivated by fixing whatever is wrong with individual functioning and less with the larger agenda of placing the scientific research agenda in the larger economic picture of a global health. If genetics pursues more and more information about our genome with an eye to selecting the best and avoiding the worst, it may have devastating impact on how we view human beings - who is "worthy" to be in the community and who "might just as well be excluded."  Social justice seems to me to occupy central place in both Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. If we lose sight of the good of the whole for the improvement of a few, we risk abandoning our commitment to the whole community which is the work of social justice.

Four academic professors working in bioethics participated in two courses designed for faculty from medical schools in China in a week long workshop-seminar to share methods of teaching bioethics as well as discussions about issues in bioethics. I was one of the four faculty (one other came from the US, one from New Zealand, and one - our leader from Germany). Case Study Approach to Teaching Biomedical Ethics (2003) and Tensions between Autonomy and Justice, and Science and Ethics for Graduate Students vs Bioethics for Undergraduates; (2004) are three presentations given in China which our counterparts asked to translate and publish in the Chinese Medical Journal of Philosophy and Medicine. These articles are posted here in English but published in Chinese.

My personal Theology

Seeking to learn more about how Moral Theology informs Bioethics, I completed a Master of Arts in Theology, taking graduate courses while continuing to teach at Hood College (2000-2003). The term paper written in partial fulfillment of the Systematic Theology course on the Trinity is called Human rights and the Trinity was never published in a journal, only written for a course. In this paper lies the core of my theology. We are relational creatures made in the image of God who is triune. Beyond the enlightenment projects of positing reason as the greatest attribute of human beings lies our relational attributes. It concerns me that the pride of place in biomedial ethics too often lands in the principle of autonomy as the individual expressed reasoned choice of a person without enough emphasis on the relationships that have helped form that "autonomous individual."  The relational nature of human beings also provides a foundation for human rights as a potential means to a chieving social justice.

After a trip to Kenya in 2005 and the impressions formed of how government and non-governmental forces can combine to intervene in the AIDS crisis, I co-authored a paper with a student on how we might move toward a more just interpretation of the Helsinki revisions of 2000. The Helsinki Declaration was generated in 1964 as an international set of guidelines for clinical research involving human subjects. It extends the requirements of the Nuremberg Code by insisting that any and all clinical research with human beings be independently reviewed by a Ethics Committee. The Helsinki Accord has been revised six times, the most recent version in 2000 after much ethical discourse on some international trials where questions evolved from the selection of subjects and the design of experiements. Two issues emerged: what should the standard of care be - that available in the sponsoring country or that of the host country? When the standard is nothing in some regions of the world, is it fair or exploitation to conduct research on their people by developed world companies, academics, or government collaborators? The second issue dealt with "reasonable availability" which asks how, when, and by what prior agreement products developed as a result of conducting resarch in a developing world setting results in the market availability of drugs, vaccines, and other products outside the fiscal resources of the host country. Should the sponsor provide the newly developed product? If so, for who, how long, and who decides? Justice means we take injustice seriously and seek ways of correcting the underlying cause. The paper Interpreting Helsinki in a Pluralistic World (2005) is the product of that experience.

In 2006 the scientific and ethics community celebrated 25 years of research on HIV-AIDS. Hood held a series of seminars on the subject. I gave a guest lecture for the center of Asian Studies at Michigan State University and in preparation for a trip to Thialand in 2006, I was heavily engaged in reading articles and books about progress with HIV/AIDS. I devoted the first two decades of my research life to virus research, including HIV/AIDS. The first two papers I published in Bioethics were on this topic following my teaching sabbatical in 1996. I have a section devoted to HIV/AIDS in two courses and from time to time offer a honors seminar on HIV/AIDS and Ethics. The paper, HIV/AIDS Exposes Gender Injustice was given at the International bioethics meeting in Beijing in August 2006. St. Paul's helps sponsor and deliver a camp for children affected or infected with HIV every summer at Claggett. The global statistics of who has HIV and who is most likely to be infected next points to serious injustices in gender relationships between and among cultures.

Reflections from Thailand Written on returning from Thailand, I address cultural understanding and our own misunderstandings, and a different way of approaching the penal system. December 2006.

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