At the end of July until early August, SCORE CIMSA got an opportunity to be the observer in a collaboration event held by UNESCO and UGM in UGM, Yogyakarta. The event, called Ethics Teachers Training Course (ETTC) is a training for teachers regarding bioethics. The speakers at the event were expertise in bioethics, such as prof. Leonardo de Castro from the University of the Philippines, Dr. Mehrunisha Suleman from Oxford University, and Dr. Mohammad Firdaus Abdul Aziz from the University of Malaya, while the participants were mostly bioethics teachers from different universities in Indonesia.
The first training was presented by Dr. Susan Vize as the Regional Adviser for Social and Human Sciences for Asia and the Pacific UNESCO, highlighting the background and history of bioethics. The reason why UNESCO focuses on bioethics is that it is a philosophical study that holds a crucial role in science. Starting in 1970, the awareness of the importance of bioethics was first established, and in 1977 UNESCO had formed a committee that established a declaration of human rights. Before bioethics got a proper attention, there were numerous violations against ethics, such the act of NAZI in 1940, Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment in 1932-1972, and US Syphilis Experiment in Guatemala in 1946-1948. Now, bioethics study has developed according to the universal declaration of human rights and had an international committee.
The second training was presented by Dr. Hedy Yulistiono as the Project Manager of LIPI, highlighting the importance of understanding bioethics for the nation. In Indonesia, bioethics is still considered as a complex study, but we he believed that we could manage bioethics issues under the guidance of Pancasila. The third training was then presented by Prof. Soenarto Sastrawijoto, a founder of bioethics department in Gadjah Mada University, highlighting the approach used by UGM regarding bioethics through HELP (humanity, ethics, legal, professionalism).
The next training was presented by Prof. Leonadro, who talked about the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights as the bioethics curriculum. According to Prof. Leonardo, bioethics need to have a firm foundation as the mass and fast improvement of science and technology may affect human life (e.g. reproductive cloning, genetic manipulation) and other aspects that are hard to control and probably beyond national limitations (e.g. organ trafficking and commercial surrogacy). Another reason for that is because nowadays, humans are starting to think about existences. For example, some scientists tried to create a synthetic embryo in a mouse without the need for sperm or ovum. The question is, after experiments in mouse, will humans be the next experiment? Does this experiment violate the sections in Universal Declaration of Human rights? In his presentation, he also gave some example of bioethical issues that happened worldwide and made us think about it.
On the next day, Dr. Meihrunnisa talked about how to teach bioethics to students by involving emotions and non-verbal communication. She made an example of strategies such as making students talk about videos that they need watch beforehand. The objective of this strategy is to ensure that students understand what they learn and to give them opportunities to speak up.
On the third day, the training was presented by Dr. Moh. Firdaus Abdul Aziz about how to manage biomedical big data (ethical and legal issues) informed consent. He discussed whether it is a form of bioethics violation (privacy and confidentiality). Biobanks are numerous data collected from patients about their disease or their body tissues, or data collected from a population. In the 21st century, the dynamic content has become a solution to the issues regarding this big biomedical data. Afterward, every participant was asked to present their materials, which later would be evaluated by the experts. This was done to see how the teachers would present their lecture in front of the students in their original universities.
By reading this, will we, as medical students, do nothing about bioethical issues? Or will we, too, strive together to protect bioethics by learning it better and apply what we have learned in order that we do not trap in an ethical issue?
