Ruth Fischbach

Bioethicist Ruth Fischbach will explore the meaning of privacy and informed consent in medical research involving human participants on Wednesday, March 21 in the first of four lectures by distinguished scientists and scholars at Columbia University on the relationship between scientific inquiry and the nature of religious or spiritual experience.

Hosted by Columbia's Center for the Study of Science and Religion, the lectures will bring together world class scholars at a time when scientists are uncovering remarkable answers as to the creation of the universe, the origins of man, and the building blocks of the human genome. Organized to open a discussion for scholars challenged by mysteries from the infinite to the subatomic whose answers do not completely lie within the realm of the physical, the speakers in coming weeks will include Phillip Kitcher, the philosopher of science and author of "The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities" (March 28); Robert Thurman, the leading interpreter in the West of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (April 3), and Roald Hoffman, a Nobel laureate in chemistry (April 17).

The series is titled "Experiencing the Mysterious," borrowing the title from Albert Einstein's famous quote: "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science."

Robert Pollack, professor of biology, founding director of the Center for the Study of Science and Religion and author of "The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith," said the data of science alone leaves humans with a vision of the planet that is devoid of many of the valuable aspects experienced in life. "This suggests that the vision may be incomplete and that scientists and scholars must be willing to accept the burden of sharing both objective knowledge and subjective experience with each other if we are to comprehend the world and our place in it in any meaningful and complete way," said Pollack. "The lecture series presents a forum for the pursuit of this idea."

Fischbach, who was appointed professor of bioethics in psychiatry at Columbia this past December, will focus on ethical issues concerning informed consent by participants in medical research. Specifically, she will consider a case at Virginia Commonwealth University, in which medical research was brought to a halt over the issue of whether informed consent should have been obtained from relatives of participants in a twins' study, since the participants were asked to reveal intimate answers about their relatives' physical characteristics and medical history. Fischbach said this case raises broader ethical questions in human gene research. She noted that when it is possible for individuals to know, for example, whether they carry a gene for breast cancer, "What is their responsibility or that of their physician to inform relatives?"

Her lecture, titled "A Bioethicist's View from Academe to Public Service and Back," will be presented from 6 to 7:30 P.M. in the Davis Auditorium of the Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research. Columbia Provost Jonathan Cole will make introductory remarks.

Fischbach served as senior advisor for biomedical ethics in the Office of Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health before joining the Columbia faculty. There, she served interagency committees concerned with safeguarding the rights and protecting the welfare of participants in research. She trained as a psychiatric epidemiologist, and was a bioethicist and medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School before joining the NIH. At Harvard, she was assistant professor in the Department of Social Medicine with joint appointments in the Division of Medical Ethics and the Division on Aging. She has focused her research on decisions around the end of life, autonomy of the elderly, communication between patients and health care professionals, pain assessment and management, as well as the experiences of research subjects as they relate to informed consent.

An outstanding example of someone who consistently chooses the road less traveled, her rich and varied career has included nursing assignments in India and researching toxic waste in Missouri. Her approach to ethics and research has been guided by the approach that "It's not what you can do – it's what you should do."

Fischbach holds a B.S. from Cornell, an M.S. and Ph.D. from Boston University and an M.P.E. from Washington University.

All of the lectures will be available for viewing on the center's website at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cssr/.

Columbia, through the Center for the Study of Science and Religion, is one of two institutions worldwide to be awarded $100,000 by the John Templeton Foundation for the inaugural three-year program. The primary goal is to promote dialogue and research within university communities between the humanistic disciplines and the physical, biological and human sciences. Each lecturer will raise questions from their research and offer reflections on their work and life and the relationship between the two. The University of California at Santa Barbara is the other recipient of this year's award. UCSB will present a series of lectures beginning April 20 with Nobel Laureate Walter Kohn as the first lecturer.

The Columbia lecture series, which is free and open to the public, resumes on Wednesday, March 28, with Kitcher's talk on "The Many-Sided Conflicts Between Science and Religion." He will be introduced by Professor Ryuichi Abe, chairman of the Religion Department. On April 3, Thurman will discuss "Manjushri's Wisdom Sword: A Buddhist View of Religion and Science," with an introduction by Darcy Kelley, professor of biology. The final lecture by Hoffman, a Cornell faculty member who is visiting professor of chemistry this year at Columbia, is titled "Old Wine, New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition," with an introduction by Paul Anderer, professor of East Asian languages and culture

All of the lectures will be from 6 to 7:30 PM in Davis Auditorium.