The second Annual Conference on Global Bioethics was held on April 21-23, 2006 in New York. It was organized by the IHEU-Appignani Center for Bioethics in NYC and sponsored by Genetics Policy Institute and the Alden March Bioethics Institute of Albany, NY. Almost 150 people attended the cocktail reception among them UN missions, representatives of the IHEU member organizations from all over the world, diplomatic missions in the US, academics and humanist activists. 70 people attended the conference sessions on Saturday and Sunday.

Taking a broad and cross-disciplinary approach to addressing medical and bio-technological issues in contemporary society, conference session topics included: stem cell research, genetic engineering and human dignity, reproductive and sexual rights of women, the United Nations as a forum for bioethics, ethical issues in infectious disease control, and the challenge of evolutionary theory.

This is the program for the conference to be held on April 21-23, 2006, presented by the IHEU-Appignani Center for Bioethics and Genetics Policy Institute assisted by The Alden March Bioethics Institute (AMBI). Click on the name of each participant for biography and abstract(s) of her/his presentation(s).

Mr. Louis J. Appignani is a successful entrepreneur from Miami, Florida. He was born in Manhattan. Founder and chairman of LouJA Realty Inc., he was the chairman and founder of Barbizon International Modeling School until 2000. After serving in the US Army, he graduated from the Baruch School, New York City and earned an MS degree from Columbia University in finance. He attended postgraduate studies in economics at Indiana University. He has served on the boards of a number of professional and civic organizations and in 2001 established the Louis J. Appignani Foundation.

Taina Bien-Aimé is the Executive Director of Equality Now, an international human rights organization that works for the protection of the rights of women and girls. Ms. Bien-Aimé holds a Juris Doctor from NYU School of Law and a Licence in Political Science from the University of Geneva and the Graduate School of International Studies, Switzerland. Prior to her appointment as Executive Director in 2001, Ms. Bien-Aimé served as the General Counsel of Equality Now, and has been a board member of the organization since 1993. Ms. Bien-Aimé was Director of Business Affairs/Film Acquisition at Home Box Office from 1996 to 1999. She also practiced international corporate law at a Wall Street law firm, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton from 1992 to 1996.

Jason Lott is a former Marshall Scholar at Oxford University and a current Gamble Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. His research interests include clinical ethics, health policy-making, and health economics. He has most recently worked as an intern researcher in the Evidence and Information for Policy Unit of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. John Harris, Ph.D. is Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics Institute of Medicine, Law and Bioethics School of Law at the University of Manchester and Julian Savuleascu, Ph.D. is the Director of Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Marin Gillis is an Assistant Professor of Health Care Ethics and Philosophy and Co-Director of the Medical Humanities Research Group at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston, MA. Her scholarship includes the ethics pharmacist refusal to dispense emergency contraception, pharmacogenomics, and the ethics of embryonic stem cell research with a particular concern for the commodification of women's reproductive material. She holds two graduate degrees in philosophy, an LPh. Higher Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven and a PhD from the University of Calgary. She was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellow. She is a Steering Committee Member of the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory and a member of the American Philosophical Association, The Society for Philosophy and Technology, and the American Association of Practical and Professional Ethics.

James Hughes is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and its affiliated World Transhumanist Association. A bioethicist and sociologist, Dr. Hughes teaches health policy at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, where he also taught bioethics. Dr. Hughes is author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future, and produces a syndicated weekly radio program, Changesurfer Radio. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and the Working Group on Ethics and Technology at Yale University. Dr. Hughes speaks on medical ethics, health care policy and future studies worldwide, and appears often radio and television.

Harry Stopes-Roe received BSc and MSc in physics from Imperial College, London University; and PhD in Philosophy from Cambridge University. Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer, Science Studies at Birmingham University; now retired. His work led him to reject the idea of "God"; and to seek an alternative base for morality - i.e. Humanism. Much concerned with both the theoretical foundations and the practical development of Humanism. Chair, later Vice President, British Humanist Association. Active in IHEU for many years. Chaired the working group that developed the IHEU "Minimum Statement".

Colleen Lyons has been employed by Congress & IBM and most recently Gartner VP, Executive Relations. Her current area of research and humanitarian efforts include the ethical implications of infectious disease in developing nations and the covenantal ties which exist in societal, geographical and economic spheres and the interplay among capital markets, global policy institutions, emerging nations and the ethical duties of those stakeholders. She has presented on these topics in Africa and the United States. Ms. Lyons holds a Master of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (May, 2006) and studied Global Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary and holds a BA in Political Science and Urban Planning from Rutgers College. She served on the international steering committee of the International Student Conference on AIDS (Tanzania). Ms. Lyons participated in the World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Muscat, Oman, April 2006). Ms. Lyons is employed with LRN, governance, an ethics and compliance firm.

Janet Dolgin is the Jack and Freda Dicker Distinguished Professor of Health Care Law at Hofstra University School of Law. She has a B.A. in philosophy from Barnard College, a Ph.D. in anthropology from Princeton University, and a J.D. from the Yale Law School. Her scholarly work combines insights from anthropology and legal scholarship. Her scholarly work combines insights from anthropology and legal scholarship. Professor Dolgin has written many articles, published in a variety of law reviews and other scholarly journals, and edited volumes. Much of this work has analyzed legal responses to shifts in the family (including those occasioned by developments in reproductive technology and by the "new genetics") and to shifts in the structure of health care in the U.S. and elsewhere. http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/Law/law_dolgin.cfm