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News Release

Last modified: Tuesday, March 2, 2004

Medical ethicist to deliver the Matthew Vandivier Sims Memorial Lecture

Policy options for human embryonic stem cell research

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Professor LeRoy Walters from Georgetown University will be the speaker for the Matthew Vandivier Sims Memorial Lecture on March 11 at 4 p.m. on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University. Walters will speak on "Five Policy Options for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research: An International Perspective."

The lecture is free and open to the public. The presentation will be in Room 150 of the Student Building, which is the building with the clock tower just east of the Sample Gates at the intersection of Indiana and Kirkwood avenues. Parking is available at the Indiana Memorial Union lot or at the Poplars Garage.

Walters earned bachelor's degrees in religion from Messiah College and Mennonite Biblical Seminary and master's and Ph.D. degrees in ethics from Yale University. He is the Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Professor of Christian Ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, and a professor of philosophy at Georgetown. Since 1976, he has been engaged with the ethical and public policy questions surrounding recombinant DNA research and human-gene-transfer research.

Walters has served three terms on the National Institutes of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, which he chaired from 1993 to 1996. He is coauthor with Julie Gage Palmer of The Ethics of Human Gene Therapy (Oxford University Press, 1997) and coeditor with Tom L. Beauchamp of an anthology titled Contemporary Issues in Bioethics (6th edition, Wadsworth, 2003). He is author and editor of numerous other books as well.

The lecture is sponsored by the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions at IU Bloomington, and the family and friends of Matthew Vandivier Sims, the son of Damon and Suzette Sims, who died in infancy.

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