2003 Platsis Symposium
Bioethics: Ancient and Modern
By Prof. Vassilios Lambropoulos

The 2nd annual Arthur and Mary Platsis Symposium on the Greek Classical Legacy took place in September 2003 and focused on "Bioethics: Ancient and Modern," bringing together faculty, students and lay people. The audience included representatives from most professional fields dealing with this area of moral decision-making such as medicine, nursing, law, sociology, ethics, business, and theology. As it is well known,bioethics traces its roots to the Hippocratic Oath which required physicians above all to "do no harm."

Following his warm opening remarks, Provost Paul Courant handed out the four awards in the student competition for work in the Greek legacy. This year's entries ranged from essays and scholarly papers to CDs and DVDs. The winners were undergraduate Microbiology student Maria Komissarova (for a story on a visit to Meteora), undergraduate Music student Peter Bussigel (for his composition Siren for orchestra), graduate Anthropology student Despina Margomenou (for a paper on Later Bronze/Early Iron Age society as well as ideologies of Aegean archaeology), and graduate Theatre student Holly Maples and Vanessa Luke (for their play The Electra Project).

The first Symposium speaker, Georgios Anagnostopoulos (Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Arts & Humanities, University of California-San Diego) discussed "Ancient Greek Views on the Goals of Medicine and their Implications." He summarized ancient views on the primacy of health in life, the natural basis of medicine, and its place in the social sphere views that lie behind Plato's position that the production or improvement of health is the sole aim of the practice of the art of medicine. The next speaker, Alfonso Gómez-Lobo (Professor of Metaphysics & Moral Philosophy, Georgetown University, and Member of President Bush's Council on Bioethics) presented "Human Embryos: An Aristotelian Analysis." He addressed the moral questions of harvesting embryonic stem cells by combining modern genetics with the Aristotelian metaphysics of ousia/substance. The last speaker, David Prentice (Professor of Life Sciences, Indiana State University, and Adjunct Prof. of Medical & Molecular Genetics, Indiana University), lectured on "Science, Society, and Stem Cells." He suggested that things which need to be considered in order to determine the morally proper use of human embryos include possible patients' benefits, facts vs. claims and hopes of advanced research, scientific alternatives as well as the economics of research, and potential availability to all patients.

U-M faculty Rachana Kamtekar (Philosophy), Roger Albin (Neurology), and Elizabeth Petty (Medical Genetics) were the respondents while a concluding roundtable discussion among the three speakers was moderated by colleague Sam Phan (Pathology). Talks and responses can be found at: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/modgreek/ under Platsis Endowment. What no website can capture, though, is the lively presentation of the talks and responses; the highly sophisticated exchange of ideas which brought out the daunting complexity of issues; the interdisciplinary range of arguments which found philosophers discussing DNA and physicians defending J. Habermas; and the passionate commitment to values shared by everybody present.

The next Platsis Symposium, entitled "Crete: A Meeting Place for Cultures" will take place on Sunday, October 3, 2004 from 3-10 p.m. in the Michigan League. Visit the Classical Studies the calendar portion of our website for more details.

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