INTERNATIONAL EVENT’S CALENDAR

NAINConnect 2012

Registration details for a two-step registration [conference plus hotel] are now available.

Download, complete, and sign the registration form and mail with check. Details are in the following NAINews Blog post NAINConnect 2012 Registration Details and on the home page at www.nain.org

Direct questions to Imam Plemon plemon@interfaithci.org or Jan Swanson worldpilgrims@bellsouth.net

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Faith & Nursing Symposium

Welcome to the 3rd Faith and Nursing Symposium, hosted by Trinity Western University School of Nursing. This international symposium gathers nurses and other caregivers from across practice and academic settings to discuss the interface between religion, spirituality, nursing and healthcare ethics.

Plenary Speakers:

Marsha Fowler (Azusa Pacific University, CA)
Sonya Grypma (Trinity Western University, BC)
Elizabeth Johnston Taylor (Mary Potter Hospice, Auckland, New Zealand; Loma Linda University, CA)
Donal O’Mathuna (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Rani Srivastava (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto)

The symposium features esteemed plenary speakers, concurrent presentations, a public panel (Friday evening), roundtable discussions with leading thinkers in the field, and a celebration of the newly published books Religion, Religious Ethics, and Nursing and Religion: A Clinical Guide for Nurses.

Several recent social trends have rekindled the recognition of the relevance of religion to ethics and nursing. Global migration has resulted in unprecedented religious diversity. At the same time, alternative spiritualities that emphasize personal quests for meaning are increasingly stressed.

These social trends have resulted in what are referred to as a post-secular societies, and present an urgent need to acknowledge and draw upon religion and theology from multiple faith traditions in nursing and healthcare ethics. The inclusion of religious perspectives into ethics is needed “at the bedside”, as well as in health ethics and policy in relation to regional, national and global health, with particular emphasis placed on disadvantaged, disvalued and marginalized populations.

Brave New World? Genetic Engineering & Human Dignity

Journal of Interdisciplainary Studies Call for Papers for August World Congress:

Genetic engineering poses a challenge equal to AI’s “transhumanism” in its implications for human dignity and the very notion of what it means to be human. Indeed, there seems to be a confluence of gentech and AI since they are closely related. While gentech promises unprecedented new powers for humans to redesign God’s creation, AI seems to provide the necessary technology for manipulating such a Brave New World. Gentech’s enormous potential benefits include altered plants which can withstand diseases or vicissitudes of climate and thus yield more abundant crops to possibly end hunger in the world.

New discoveries in bio-sciences, such as the ability to grow skin tissue from DNA to repair damaged or burnt skin of fire or accident victims, may extend to growing entire organs or limbs which could revolutionize medicine, replacing organ transplants and prosthetics. Just like in nature, where amphibians can re-grow missing limbs, humans might be able to do the same. As with many successful human inventions, from the submarine to the airplane, nature has the secret key to regeneration processes which gentech might discover. But gentech’s social, psychological, and spiritual implications pose even greater challenges to human self-understanding.

As in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984, the central question concerns not only science or technique, but their impact on human self-identity and free choice. Gentech and AI may appear to replace God and elevate man in His place, since the new powers promise to fulfill humanity’s quest for self-sufficiency and immortality. As stewards of God's creation, we face the challenge, then: how can science and technology benefit, rather than enslave, all humanity? [READ MORE…]