About Our Events

• Hagop S. Mekhjian, MD Lectureship and Institutional Grand Rounds in Medical Ethics and Professionalism

  Dr. Mekhjian, among many other things, was the long-time Chief Medical Officer for the Ohio State University Medical Center. In his decades of leadership, he impacted multiple areas. Throughout his career and even in his retirement, Dr. Mekhjian shares a passion for virtuous medicine. Before his retirement, he championed medical ethics and professionalism. Through his efforts and the generosity of several of his friends (including George and Tina Skestos), he formed the annual Institutional Grand Rounds in Medical Ethics and Professionalism and an Endowed Chair in Medical Ethics and Professionalism, both which now bear his name. Dr. Mekhjian helped recruit and mentor the first Mekhjian Chair and founding director of the Center for Bioethics, Dr. Nash.

  For more on Dr. Mekhjian, please explore the links below:

  https://www.dispatch.com/article/20130728/news/307289842

  Journey to Innovation: Dr. Hagop Mekhjian (VIDEO)

• The Chauncey D. Leake and Elizabeth W. Leake Lectureship and Student Essay Award in medical ethics and humanities in the health professions

  Chauncey Leake was a leader at OSU’s College of Medicine from 1956-1962. He has a remarkable career at OSU and beyond. A pharmacologist by training, he pioneered departments of pharmacology. He was a successful research scientist. But in this lectureship we remember his contribution to medical ethics, history of medicine, and medical humanities. This lectureship and essay award was established shortly after Dr. Leake’s death in 1978. Notably, Dr. Leake died doing one of the things he loved – he was reading original poetry on stage at a gathering in his honor.

  To learn more about Dr. Leake, explore the links below:

  https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/13/archives/dr-chauncey-d-leake-dies-at-81-pharmacologist-and-administrator.html

  https://muse.jhu.edu/article/541959

  http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v3p411y1977-78.pdf

  https://calisphere.org/item/888d91b6-c2e2-40f3-b6a3-8c11c1112be3/

• The H. Tristram Engelhardt Award “for a provocative voice in bioethics that makes us consider foundations”

  H. Tristram Engelhardt, MD, PhD was never student, trainee, nor faculty at OSU. Why then is he remembered annually here? He was the primary mentor for Dr. Nash, the founding director for the Center. As such, he helped guide the Center’s formation and he influenced all of the early members of the Center (even those who disagreed with him). In the formation of this Award and lecture the Center furthers 1) that one does not know bioethics without knowing the work of Engelhardt, we thus show gratitude for his contribution and 2) that we must take ethical diversity seriously and not pretend that all issues are settled or agreed upon. Engelhardt was an unparalleled scholar and great thinker. While having command over procedural and policy issues of bioethics, he demanded considerations at the foundational level. He did not shy away from controversy but instead leaned into it. He included robust considerations of ethics from theological or religious perspective as well, a perspective our Center explicitly engages.

  http://www.bioethics.net/2018/06/a-tribute-to-professor-h-tristram-engelhardt-jr-phd-md-1941-2018/

  https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/h-tristram-engelhardt-jr-md-phd/2002-02

  https://www.youtube.com/user/ndethics/search?query=engelhardt

• About the Conference on Medicine and Religion

  Founded in 2012 in Chicago, The Conference on Medicine and Religion has become annual conference drawing participants from across the country and around the globe. The OSU Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities is among the list of prestigious institutions that sponsors and hosts the event.

  http://www.medicineandreligion.com/

• About the Center for Ethics and Human Values

  The OSU Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities works closely with and partners with the OSU Center for Ethics and Human Values. While CEHV has a broader scope than biomedicine, they help the conversations in bioethics reach across our campus and community.

  https://cehv.osu.edu/

• Past Speakers

  Hagop Mekhjian Grand Rounds speakers

  2000 Edmund Pellegrino “Human Dignity and Bioethics”
  2010 Ellen Wright Clayton “Genetic Testing: Ethical Dilemmas”
  2011- Mark Siegler “Should Elective Surgical Patients be invited to Serve as Living Kidnery Donors?”
  2012 Robert Troug “Talking with Patients and Families About Medical Errors”
  2013 Jeffrey Bishop “Popular (NEURO)Science and other Political Schemes”
  2014 John Lantos “Family Requests for Futile Treatment”
  2015 Lauris Kaldjian “Concepts of Health and Goals of Care in Shared Clinical Decision Making”
  2016 Farr Curlin “What Does Religion Have to Do With Medicine?”
  2017 David Casarett “Is medical marijuana really ‘medical’?”
  2018 Abraham Nussbaum “An Attempt to Speak to a Broad Medical Crowd While Addressing a Current Issue (Physician Resiliency) and Using an Approach Appropriate for the Setting (Medical Humanities)”
  2019 Joseph Fins “Disorders of Consciousness, Past, Present and Future: Clinical, Neuroethical and Legal Implications of Medial Progress”
  2020 Darrell Gray “Bringing the ‘Moral Determinants of Health’ to the Bench, Bedside and Community”

  Chauncey D. Leake Lecture

  2015 H. Tristram Engelhardt “Professional Moral Conscience in an Age after Morality”
  2016 Rabbi Samuel E. Karff "The Re-emergence of the Healer in an Age of High-Tech Medicine"
  2017 Kevin Sabet “Is Marijuana the next Big Tobacco?”
  2018 Lydia Dugdale “Pros and Cons of Physician-Assisted Suicide (Aid in Dying)”
  2019 Timothy Murphy “The Ethics of Body Modification for Gender Expression”
  2020 Dónal O’Mathuna “Allocating Resources Ethically during COVID-19 - From Ventilators to Vaccines”

  Chauncey D. Leake Student Lecture

  2015 Mark Wells “Orthopedists and Traditional Bonesetters: Managing Interprofessional Tensions in International Medicine” 2016 no award winner
  2017 Ethan Schimmoeller “Cannabis and the Cult of the Body”
  2018 Molly Larson “Implications of Personhood Following Traumatic Brain Injury: Use of an Integrated and Evolving Model”
  2019 Phillip Wozniak “Of Artificial Wombs and Actual Births: A Defense of the Biobag”
  2020 no student winner this year due to COVID-19

  H. Tristram Engelhardt Award Lecture

  2015 Ruiping Fan “Conscientious Objection to VSED: What can China Learn from American Bioethics?”
  Dr. Fan was the first recipient of this award. Dr. H. Tristram Engelhardt was present and received an honorary award as well.
  2016 Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes “‘Foundations’ of Bioethics? How they float on a moral choice
  2017 John F. Peppin “The Death of Pain Medicine: The Case of Marijuana”
  2018 Mark Cherry “Should Adolescents be Permitted to Consent to Medical Research on Their Own Behalf?”
  2019 Ana Iltis “Health Inequities as a Research Ethics Problem”
  2021 Jeffrey Bishop “Living in the Wounds of Secularity Christian Musings on Healing Medicine’s Secular/Religious Divide”