Rape Crisis in Congo Topic of Emory Ethics Center Dialogue

'The Vagina Monologues" playwright Eve Ensler and award winning humanitarian Dr. Denis Mukwege of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will hold a public conversation at Emory University's Center for Ethics titled "Turning Pain to Power" at noon, Monday, Feb. 23. Admission is free but reservations are required by contacting the center at 404.727.4954, or ethics@emory.edu.

The Ensler-Mukwege dialogue is part of a five-city tour organized by V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. The tour is meant to raise awareness and to combat rampant rape and mutilation of women in DRC that has affected hundreds of thousands.

Mukwege, founder of the PANZI Hospital in Bukavu, DRC, was honored in December by the United Nations for his humanitarian work. During his public conversation with Ensler, founder and artistic director of V-Day, Mukwege will describe his experiences treating and performing life-saving surgery on thousands of Congolese women and girls. Their conversations also will explore causes of the brutality, ways to stop the ongoing violence, and Congo's growing movement of women leaders.

The tour is in support of V-Day's joint campaign with UNICEF to stop rape in DRC and will make stops this month in Los Angles, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. For more information on V-Day initiative or the tour, contact Margaret Bensfield, 202.751.3476, or Susan Celia Swan, 917.865.6603.

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Baby Doe Rules Examined at Georgia State Law Review Symposium

When should medical treatment be provided for a seriously ill infant? What if aggressive treatment causes enduring pain? And what happens if doctors and parents disagree about whether treatment should be given?

These are just a few questions that have been debated in medicine for more than 25 years, ever since the Reagan administration issued the “Baby Doe Rules” in response to the case of a Bloomington, Ind., infant with a reparable birth defect who was allowed to die without surgery.

The Baby Doe Rules, which will be the focus of the 2009 Georgia State University Law Review Symposium Friday (Feb. 13), conditions the grant of federal funds for any state’s child protective services program on the assurance that it can respond to reports of medical neglect. Those reports may include the withholding of medical treatment from disabled infants with life-threatening conditions.

“The early controversial cases involved infants who had relatively straight forward medical needs,” said Charity Scott, director of the Center for Law, Health and Society in Georgia State’s College of Law. “By contrast, the hard cases today often involve extremely premature infants – at the cusp of viability, at 22 or 23 weeks gestational age when born – who have multiple medical needs. Other hard cases today involve infants who have genetic abnormalities that can cause severe physical and mental impairments. Doctors and parents struggle with whether or how a child’s uncertain prognosis for the future should impact their decisions about treatment."

Advances in medical technology over the past 25 years have played a significant role in improving the health outcomes of infants who may have died because no treatment was available a generation ago, Scott said.

"Should aggressive treatment be given, and for how long? Some difficult questions affecting that decision include: What’s the likelihood that an infant’s treatment will be successful? Will it cause suffering? How long can the infant live with treatment? What will the infant’s quality of life be in the future? Whether the anticipated future quality of life of an infant should be taken into account in deciding whether to treat the child remains a controversial issue. And who should be the final decision-maker in conflicted cases is a perennial dilemma," Scott said.

From bioethicists to lawyers and doctors, more than a dozen experts from across the United States will lead discussions on the evolution of the Baby Doe Rules and the current status of decisions involving premature and other medically at-risk infants at the symposium themed, “The 25th Anniversary of the Baby Doe Rules Perspectives from the fields of Law, Health Care, Ethics, and Disability Policy.” Among the distinguished experts are Burke Balch, director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics; Dr. Mark Mercurio, director of the Yale Pediatric Ethics Program and an attending neonatologist at the Yale-New Have Children’s Hospital; and Mary Crossley, dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

At the conclusion of the symposium, which is being held in partnership with the Emory University Center for Ethics and the student-led Law Review, participants will better appreciate the roles of parents, health care providers and the government in treatment decisions for extremely ill newborns; learn ways of resolving conflicts over the care of very sick newborns, including mediation and communications skills; and understand how principles from different perspectives, influence and interact in decision making regarding treatment. The Georgia State University Law Review will publish a symposium volume on the topic in spring 2009.

“The Baby Doe Rules raise really difficult legal, medical, ethical, and policy issues,” Scott said. “The symposium is honored to host the nation's leading experts in all of these fields. It is an extraordinary opportunity in our community to come together to engage in multidisciplinary reflection and thoughtful debate about these controversial issues in the care of seriously ill infants.”

For more information, visit the symposium Web site: www.babydoesymposium.org.

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Neville Isdell, Chairman of The Coca-Cola Company, to Receive Ethics Advocate Award from Georgia State

Neville Isdell, chairman of the Board of Directors of The Coca-Cola Company, will receive the 2008 Ethics Advocate Award from the Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility, a unit of the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. The award will be presented at the Carter Center on Thursday, November 6.

The Ethics Advocate Award honors an individual who is an effective agent of change in a particular field or in the business community at large. Mr. Isdell was selected for advancing corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability within The Coca-Cola Company as well as for inspiring business leaders around the globe to address their firms' responsibilities.

"Neville Isdell has challenged his company and his corporate peers to engage stakeholders and critics in their firms' initiatives to create healthy, sustainable communities," said Steve Olson, director of the Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility. "Whether workforce diversity or human rights; employee and family health or workplace safety; or the sustainable use of water, energy and natural resources, Mr. Isdell has ensured that The Coca-Cola Company is committed to the highest standards of ethics and moral responsibility across its operations."

"It is an honor to accept this recognition on behalf of the men and women of The Coca-Cola Company," Mr. Isdell said. "Our business depends on consumers choosing to invite us into their lives, and we understand that consumers only issue those invitations to companies and brands they trust and respect. This award is indeed an honor, but it is also an affirmation that our work must continue and evolve if we are to stay relevant."

Mr. Isdell is the sixth individual to receive the Ethics Advocate Award. He joins:
Charles Brewer, founder of MindSpring Enterprises and Green Street Properties, for advocacy of values-based management, 2007
The Honorable Shirley Franklin, Mayor, City of Atlanta, for restoring trust in city government through an "ethics first" approach, 2006
Bill Bolling, Executive Director, Atlanta Community Food Bank, for compelling businesses to fulfill their responsibility to hungry and illiterate citizens, 2005
Ray C. Anderson, founder and Chairman, Interface, Inc., for advocacy of environmental sustainability, 2004
The Honorable Robert Benham, Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia, for advocacy of ethics, equality and fairness in judicial reform, 2003

Like his predecessors, Mr. Isdell will be presented with a sculpture consisting of a sphere within a crystal cube, resting on a patina bronze that bears the honoree's name. Malcolm Grear, a world-renowned artist best known to Atlantans for the Quilt of Leaves motif he designed for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, created the sculpture.

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