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LECTURE AT PHILADELPHIA VA HOSPITAL RAISES FREE

SPEECH CONCERNS -- A speech about human rights and

Guantanamo Bay lands bioethics expert in hot water.

 

 

Story here... http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/health/16164871.htm

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Speech at area VA hospital raises a fuss

Rights talk draws critical letter, officials' concern.

By Dawn Fallik
Inquirer Staff Writer

Bioethics expert George Annas has spoken at hospitals and universities nationwide about medical bias, AIDS, and the right to die. But it was a lecture touching on human rights and Guantanamo Bay that landed him in the center of a debate that some say threatens free speech at Philadelphia's VA Hospital.

After Annas' speech, given Sept. 28 to more than 100 people at the Veterans Administration hospital, the Department of Veterans Affairs received a single, unsigned letter of complaint questioning whether federal agencies should sponsor speakers who oppose current administration policies.

Administrators at the Philadelphia hospital appear to share the writer's concern.

Chief of staff Martin Heyworth wrote in an Oct. 16 e-mail to the program director that if future talks in the series looked as though they might generate a similar reaction, "there might be some merit in canceling the rest of the series."

Annas, a professor and chair of Boston University's Department of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights, said the complaint did not surprise him. The reaction from the VA did.

"If I only upset one person I don't think I gave a very good speech," he said in an interview yesterday, adding that he had spoken previously at the VA hospital about human experimentation, death, and human rights without incident.

The lecture was part of the hospital's bioethics grand rounds series, when doctors and staff gather to talk about a particular case or topic.

Past topics in the three-year-old monthly program have included human experimentation, face transplants, and hospice care.

Annas' September lecture was publicized in advance under the title "Human Rights and Bioethics: Lessons From the Geneva Conventions, the Guantanamo Hunger Strikes, and the Nuremberg Code."

The talk included concerns about the ethics of force-feeding prisoners on hunger strikes. Among the PowerPoint slides was an often-seen image of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib; Annas said he used it as an example of what the military said it found unethical.

"I didn't consider this a terribly controversial speech," he said.

Ending the program, Annas said, would be a "fairly simple-minded overreaction to one person's response."

Evelyne Shuster, director of the VA's medical ethics program, said she first heard about the complaint when Heyworth, the chief of staff, sent her a copy and asked for a response.

"I'm writing to you to please investigate how lectures like this are allowed to be presented in federal facilities during a time of war, in open disagreement with the current administrations policies in Guantanamo," says the one-page letter, which was sent to the White House and the secretaries of defense and veterans affairs. The letter writer says that he or she is an employee of the Philadelphia VA facility.

Typically, Shuster said, she has sent bioethics event notices to about 5,000 people at the VA and the University of Pennsylvania. After the complaint, she said, the hospital's public-relations staff told her it would handle future announcements.

But the next invitation never went out. Hospital officials said the e-mail was misplaced.

So when Temple urban studies professor Allen M. Hornblum came to speak about medical experiments on prisoners last month, only five people attended. Most lectures are attended by 50 to 100 people, Shuster said.

"Was I disappointed? Sure," said Hornblum, who also attended Annas' lecture, which he described as "rather tame."

"It seems like they're trying to kill the program," Hornblum said.

Heyworth was not available for comment yesterday, but Judi Cheary, the hospital's vice president for external affairs, said the only person upset about the hospital's reaction was Shuster.

Told that both Annas and Hornblum were concerned, Cheary said: "Why would the speakers be upset? Why should they care if we have a bioethics program?"

Despite Heyworth's e-mail suggesting that future controversy might kill the series, Cheary said there was no threat to the program. It was more of a request that program talks stick to medical ethics and not what some might consider political issues.

"As a federal facility, we need to try and stay bipartisan," Cheary said. "We don't want to invite speakers that are critical of either party."

She suggested that if Shuster wanted to have more controversial offerings, she should cross the street to the University of Pennsylvania, a private institution that has affiliations with the VA.

In fact, Annas is scheduled to speak Thursday at Penn's Center for AIDS Research. More than 200 people are expected to hear his lecture titled "Rationing HIV and AIDS Treatment in Africa: Ethical and Human Rights Dimensions."

Read the anonymous letter and see the presentation that prompted it at http://go.philly.com/talk

 

Contact staff writer Dawn Fallik at 215-854-2795 or dfallik@phillynews.com .

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Larry Scott