About the MU Center for Health Ethics

The modern challenges of healthcare require an increasing awareness of the ethical and moral issues that encompass not only the welfare of patients but also the functioning of healthcare organizations, and the role of research in society. Health care ethics has also evolved as a crucial component in academic medicine given the related challenges of education, training, and research. The MU Center for Health Ethics seeks to address these difficult issues through dialogue across multiple related disciplines, as well as in the broader academic and public community. Some of the more challenging issues being addressed deal with questions about:

• Futility and Withholding Treatment


• Palliative Care and the Control of Suffering


• End of Life Care


• Advance Directives


• The Role of Ethics Committees


• Ethics Consultation


• Access to Health Care


• Bioterrorism and Emerging Public Health Threats


• Organizational Ethics


• Ethical Issues in Managed Care


• Informed Consent and Informed Refusal


• Decision-making Capacity


• Privacy and Confidentiality


• Stem Cell Research and Cloning


• Genetics