The Turkish Bioethics Association, with Future Vision in Historical Perspective

Işil Ülman F. Y.

EACME Conference 2008 'Organizing Bioethics: Challenges for Western, Central and Eastern Europe', Praha, Çek Cumhuriyeti, 25 - 27 Eylül 2008, (Yayınlanmadı)

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Yayınlanmadı
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Praha
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Çek Cumhuriyeti
  • Acıbadem Mehmet Ali Aydınlar Üniversitesi Adresli: Hayır

Özet

EACME Conference 2008

25-27 September 2008 – Prague, Czech Republic
'Organizing Bioethics: Challenges for Western, Central and Eastern Europe'

 

Oral Paper Abstract

 

The Turkish Bioethics Association, with Future Vision in Historical Perspective

 

                                           Yesim Isil Ulman


The Turkish Bioethics Association was founded in Ankara in 1994. The idea of founding a bioethics society in Turkey was put forward by Prof. Yaman Ors and Dr. Yasemin Oguz, the prominent ethicists in Turkey, on their way back from the Inaugural Bioethics Conference at Amsterdam. First steps to the Association was taken by academic circles of medical ethics, veterinary medicine ethics, dentistry ethics. Prof. Berna Arda and Dr. Serap Sahinoglu worked diligently to institutionalize the Association just from its establishment. In a short while, the Association, gathered together not only the medical ethicists from the academy, but also the leading authors of ethics, history and philosophy with young MA and PhD researchers from the allied disciplines all over Turkey.

 

Turkish Bioethics Association is a platform to take up, to debate the problems arising in bioethics in Turkey or elsewhere by searching solutions in an interdisciplinary structure. The objective of the Association as it is mentioned in its Bylaws is to contribute to the development and education of bioethics and to improve its connections with healthcare disciplines as well as other related areas.

Turkish Bioethics Association (TBA) organizes bi-annual symposia on bioethics, and since 2001 has also been holding national congress of medical ethics, as well as courses on and conferences on certain bioethical issues. TBA sets sup ad hoc committees to work on specific points of discussion such as stem cell researches and trials, and attaches importance to prepare statements on the foremost ethical problems in Turkey at clinical settings such as Informed Consent, Patient Rights, Biomedical Research Ethics.

The Association has published a number of boks, mostly the proceedings of symposia and congresses.  It has recently issued a handbook on The Ethical Dimension of Transformation of Health Affairs in Turkey compiling the symposium debates on the matter in a critical viewpoint. A group of members of TBA have recently fulfilled the Turkish translation of the Establishing Bioethics Committees   by Prof. Henk ten Have, and the Turkish Branch of UNESCO with which TBA works in cooperation, is going to publish the Handbook soon.  

Turkish Bioethics Association has been preparing to hold a congress in November 2008, and has chosen the main theme as “From Medical Ethics to Bioethics” heading for a broader perspective to discuss the main problematics in ethics, biomedicine, healthcare, ethical philosophy and law with international contributions, in accordance with its future vision and liabilities.