Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education Turkey Working Group

Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education Working Groups' representatives held an interim meeting at Amsterdam VU University Department of Medical Humanities on January 29, 2015. Participants: Kevser Vatansever, Volkan Kavas, Yesim Isil Ulman (Turkey), Yolande Voskes, Menno de Bree, Guy Widdershoven (Netherlands), Peter Kakuk (Hungary), Vojin Rakic (Serbia), Rouven Porz (Switzerland, guest). Aim of the meeting: to exchange experiences and explore the opportunities for mutual, multi-based scientific research for the working groups in the Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education. Program of the meeting: After an introductory round of the participants, a draft research proposal was presented on behalf of the Turkish working group. In the afternoon, a seminar was organized with the staff of the Department of Medical Humanities, on ethics education in international perspective. Next, possibilities for funding were discussed, especially COST. Finally, future cooperation was discussed, focusing on goals and possible contributions to European programs, and decisions were made for further actions.

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UNESCO Workshop Book of Proceedings, pp:111-123, 2011

Introduction This study aims to introduce the Turkish Bioethics Association (TBA) by dealing with its objectives, functions, works and activities as an academic, non-governmental organization in Turkey with a special emphasis on the activities of social responsibility. It will also try to envisage future perspectives of the TBA. Establishment of TBA TBA was founded in Ankara in 1994. The idea of establishing a bioethics society in Turkey was inspired by Prof. Yaman Ors and Dr. Yasemin Oguz, on their way back from the 1st World Bioethics Congress at Amsterdam where many countries and members were represented by local, national societies (12). First steps to the Association were taken by the academics of medical ethics, veterinary medicine ethics, and dentistry ethics. Prof. Berna Arda, the first president of TBA worked to institutionalize the Association just from its inception. In a short while, the Association brought together not only bioethicists from the medical sciences, but also the authors of ethics, history and philosophy with young MA and PhD researchers from the allied disciplines all over Turkey (13). The Scope of TBA Turkish Bioethics Association is defined, according to its Bylaws, as a platform to take up and discuss problems arising in health care and medical sciences in an interdisciplinary way. This definition necessitates the explanation of the concept of bioethics which is implemented in its broadest sense by the Association. TBA considers bioethics as a discipline dealing with moral value issues in practice of healthcare professions (such as medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, etc.), and also other disciplines (biology, social sciences, philosophy, law, ...) (14). TBA is concerned not only with moral problems stemmed from medical-clinical practices, but also with other moral issues originating from the activities influencing the living beings. Biomedical researches, publication ethics, environmental ethics, animal rights, policies affecting health care system, public health issues and related topics are also main concerns of TBA. Objectives of TBA The objectives of the Association are: • to contribute to the development of bioethics, • to improve the undergraduate and postgraduate education • to develop contacts with healthcare disciplines as well as with other relevant areas, • to facilitate the exchange of information between researchers in bioethics • to organize regular academic, scientific meetings in bioethics; • to encourage the development of research and teaching in bioethics; • to promote and make known of issues of bioethics to the public. • to be alert and attentive on problems of bioethics offending dignity of the discipline (15). Recent Meetings On the basis of social responsibility TBA is quite sensible to the hot topics of the health system in Turkey and some of its recent meetings may be exemplified to this aim: Symposium on the Ethical Aspects of Organ Transplantation (30), Symposium of the New Reproductive Technologies and New Motherhood have been realized to provide for a multidisciplinary platform to discuss the issues in view of medicine, ethics, forensic medicine, law, sociology, psychiatry and history (31). The Panel of Medical Malpractice has set a good example to this approach by dealing with medical error and the mandatory medical insurance that concern all healthcare workers in Turkey (32). The meetings mentioned above have been realized in cooperation with the Istanbul Chamber of Physicians as an indispensable stakeholder of the issues at debate. The latest and sixth congress was named after New Horizons in Bioethics in line with the previous congress in 2008 by emphasizing TBA’s mission to hold meeting in a bioethical perspective. 2010 Congress has achieved this goal successfully by integrating the studies of medical ethics and related sciences together with the cooperative branches such as medical education, medical law, sociology, public health, history, biomedical branches in a multidisciplinary vision. It has also given a special emphasis on the rights of vulnerable groups by assuring them a platform of speech (33). Turkish Bioethics Association, as a member of EACME, will be organizing the European Association of the Centres of Medical Ethics Annual Meeting for the first time in Istanbul-Turkey on September 15-17th 2011 (34). The scientific programme will cover a wide range of topics related to bioethics from a cross-cultural perspective, including bioethics and humanities, universal values and cultural diversity, European Biomedicine Convention, human rights and bioethics, and health care policy making. This international platform will hopefully provide a basis for handling the professional and moral values and bioethical issues in conflict. On the eve of the event, Globalising European Bioethics Education Summer School will be held for foreign and Turkish participants in conjunction with TBA-EACME Conference on September 11-14, 2011. The Executive Committee wishes its local members and international colleagues all to experience the international arena for exploring moral and ethical values in a cross-cultural vision leaning on a participatory democratic platform nourished from the ethical discourse. Conclusion The teaching of ethics owes a great deal to the medical school curriculum in Turkey and has rooted in the steps of 19th century modernization movement in medical education. The emergence of the Turkish Bioethics Association can be better evaluated in line with this historical past that has given rise to the making of a bioethics society. As an academic and non-governmental organization, Turkish Bioethics Association has substantiated itself both at local and international platforms as a promising society based on this rich tradition. It will keep on contributing to the academic literature, collegiate teaching and current debates in healthcare system in view of bioethics by its functions briefly depicted in this study. Acknowledgements: I deeply appreciate the immense support of my colleagues in the Executive Board; and the contributions of the members of Türkiye Biyoetik Derneği without whom a real teamwork would have never been accomplished.

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Cambridge Bioethics Education Turkey Working Group, III. Workshop Report “How can ethics be taught in Health Sciences?”, Ankara, 23 May 2014 CAMBRIDGE BIOETHICS EDUCATION TURKEY WORKING GROUP, III. WORKSHOP REPORT “How can ethics be taught in Health Sciences?” Ankara, 23 May 2014 Workshop Group I Report By answering the question above, while creating new ones in search of answers to them, this Workshop aims to emancipate ourselves from clichées and stereotyped thoughts and applications; it intends to emphasize the importance of collaboration and interaction. Discussing the feasibility of teaching bioethics, noticing the positive and negative effects of learning environment over ethical values and ethical decision-making will help to be aware, to understand, to solve the problems in this process. During medical education, the dynamics at macro level are to determine particularly the development of ethical attitudes and behaviors of the medical students, young physicians and healthcare professionals in general. This determining factor in question can have either positive or negative effects. As a result of this interaction, the student develops attitudes and behaviors different from the point he has started in the beginning of medical education process.

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Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 2012

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Designing bioethics curriculum for international postgraduate students is a challenging task. There are at least two main questions, which have to be resolved in advance: (1) what is a purpose of a particular teaching program and (2) how to respectfully arrange a classroom for students coming from different cultural and professional backgrounds. In our paper we analyze the case of the Erasmus Mundus Master of Bioethics program and provide recommendations for international bioethics education. In our opinion teaching bioethics to postgraduate international students goes beyond curriculum. It means that such a program requires not only well-defined goals, including equipping students with necessary skills and knowledge, but also it should first and foremost facilitate positive group dynamics among students and enables them to engage in dialogue to learn from one another.

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To 12th World Conference Bioethics, Medical Ethics & Health Law, March 21-23, 2017, from Limassol, Cyprus, the conference president, Prof. Amnon Carmi showed that for the first fifty years of bioethics was discussed the construction and development of its bioethic concept and that we are now facing a second stage, a new task, that seems to be even more important, complex and difficult, namely the delivering of our message to society, by planting the ethical values into the soul of the people and into their daily life and behavior.

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Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 2017

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Escribir sobre la figura del anticristo ha agotado muchos tinteros a lo largo de los tiempos, desde la iglesia primitiva hasta nuestro tiempo. Ilustres personajes han escrito sobre el anticristo (también otros menos ilustres y entendidos) y en general las personas tienen casi infinitas interpretaciones sobre lo que significa. Desde aquellos que hablan de un personaje siniestro que aparecerá en el último tiempo (algunos lo han identificado hasta con nombre propio y lugar de nacimiento) hasta quienes entienden que no se trata de una persona, sino un sistema, o quienes lo han identificado con algún poder o reino de la historia. Un concepto que confunde a las personas es pensar que anticristo significa “contra Cristo”, como un opositor o enemigo, que en realidad también lo es, pero que ha llevado a algunos a suponer que se trata del ateísmo o el comunismo, que niegan a Cristo; cuando en realidad se trata más bien de quien se coloca “en lugar de Cristo”, que parece representarlo, pero que no lo hace. Por lo tanto, el anticristo no es un movimiento o sistema opuesto a Cristo, sino uno que se coloca en su lugar y engañará (o ha estado engañando) al mundo entero. Es importante entonces recordar que Jesús, en su discurso profético de Mateo 24, nos advirtió contra el peligro de ser engañados, de hecho es la primera advertencia que hace en dicho discurso. El engaño no sería ser descarriado por el secularismo, o por filosofías anticristianas, el ateísmo, sino, por el contrario, sería un engaño si alguien se presentara en el nombre de Cristo, pero que en realidad nos apartara del evangelio que el Señor nos enseñó. Desde que el apóstol Juan escribió: "el anticristo viene" (1 Juan 2: 18), los cristianos han especulado en cuanto a su identidad. La Iglesia Primitiva pensaba que eran los romanos. Los de la Edad Media temían que el anticristo sea los husitas, los wiclefistas, los turcos otomanos o los judíos. Lutero y los reformadores protestantes nombraron a la Roma papal como el anticristo. El jesuita español, Francisco Ribera, liberó a la Roma papal del estigma identificando al anticristo como un personaje o poder del tiempo del fin todavía desconocido, un escenario que ha comprado el mundo evangélico de hoy. Las especulaciones actuales en cuanto al anticristo incluyen desde Henry Kissinger, el humanismo secular, el comunismo, la comisión trilateral, los Illuminati, Ronald Reagan, el Mercado Común Europeo y hasta una computadora en Bélgica. Aunque la historia muestra que el pueblo de Dios ha sufrido por causa de opresores externos, tales como los egipcios, los babilonios, los griegos y los romanos, algunos creen que el anticristo se levantará desde dentro del cristianismo mismo. Y con buenas razones. La palabra anticristo, por cierto, significa no sólo "contra Cristo", sino "en lugar de Cristo". Es por eso por lo que el apóstol Pablo advierte que el anticristo "se opone y se levanta contra todo lo que se llama Dios o es objeto de culto; tanto que se sienta en el templo de Dios como Dios, haciéndose pasar por Dios" (2 Tesalonicenses 2: 4). Este poder no desafía abiertamente a Dios; en lugar de eso, el anticristo pretende hablar por Dios y toma sus prerrogativas. Aunque los cristianos disienten en cuanto a la identidad del anticristo, todos concuerdan en que el antiguo Israel era la verdadera iglesia del Antiguo Testamento. Lean, sin embargo, lo que dijo Jesús de él: "así que dais testimonio contra vosotros mismos, de que sois hijos de aquellos que mataron a los profetas... He aquí yo os envío profetas y sabios y escribas; y de ellos, a unos mataréis y crucificaréis, y a otros azotaréis en vuestras sinagogas, y perseguiréis de ciudad en ciudad; para que venga sobre vosotros toda la sangre justa que se ha derramado sobre la tierra, desde la sangre de Abel el justo hasta la sangre de Zacarías hijo de Berequías, a quien matasteis entre el templo y el altar... ¡Jerusalén, Jerusalén, que matas a los profetas ...!" (Mateo 23: 31-37). La historia de Israel prueba la verdad de las palabras de Jesús. Muchos de los profetas "fueron apedreados, aserrados, ...muertos a filo de espada" (Hebreos 11: 37) por los mismos israelitas. Jesús advirtió que su traición continuaría, y fue así. Lo mataron a él también. Estos asesinatos no fueron cometidos por los babilonios adoradores del sol, por los moabitas que sacrificaban niños, ni por idólatras paganos, ¡sino por el mismo pueblo de Dios! Clifford Goldstein, Como Fuego entre mis huesos, 91, 92 La experiencia de Israel es que los verdaderos siervos de Dios fueron perseguidos y asesinados por sus hermanos, por aquellos que aparentemente tenían la misma fe, incluso por quienes supuestamente adoraban al mismo Dios o pretendían servirle. Esto es lo que mostraremos en adelante. Por favor tenga en cuenta que la complejidad del tema requerirá alguna redundancia en las citas, y que estas tengan lugares comunes. Apelo a su paciencia y a su anhelo de conocer toda la verdad sobre este tema.

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