20th Annual John Collins Harvey Lecture: A Conversation with Joseph Fins, MD on “Covert Consciousness and Clinical Ethics: Neuroscience and Normative Obligations”

Iterative developments in neuroscientific and neurotechnological research and their varied applications give rise to both increasingly capable diagnostics and therapeutics, as well as several ethical issues, questions and dilemmas. Of specific import to clinical bioethics is covert consciousness, its demonstration, and its relevance to the beginning and end of life and to the scope and viability of medical treatments.

This year’s Twentieth Annual John Collins Harvey Lecture will feature a conversation between Dr. Joseph Fins, E. William Davis, Jr., MD Professor of Medical Ethics & Professor of Medicine; Chief, Division of Medical Ethics, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Dr. James Giordano, Chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics, and Professor of Neurology at Georgetown University Medical Center. Key points of discourse will include operationally defining covert consciousness; the validity and value of using current and emerging neurotechnologies to demonstrate its presence or absence; and implications of covert consciousness for various perspectives on the human person and human life.