Medical ethicist Dr. Amy Haddad will talk about the questions raised by extraordinary medical technologies at 11 a.m. Friday, Sept. 6 in the Kemper Recital Hall, located inside Spratt Hall at Missouri Western State University. Dr. Haddad’s speech is titled “The Convergence of Health Care Technology and Bedside Decisions: The Case of Extracorporeal Life Support.” The event is free and open to the public.

“The pressure to do everything technically possible in contemporary health care is overwhelming, particularly when the patient is a child,” said Dr. James Okapal, associate professor of philosophy at Missouri Western. “Dr. Haddad will use one technological development, extracorporeal life support, to highlight how such a treatment rapidly moves from the experimental stage to the standard of care and from narrowly defined patient populations to broader, more controversial populations and diagnoses. Her description of a clinical case involving a terminally ill child will clarify the ethical and personal costs associated with clinical innovations.”

Dr. Haddad is director of the Center for Health Policy & Ethics and the Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Cross Endowed Chair in the Health Sciences at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. She received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Creighton, her master’s in nursing from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and her doctorate in education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Dr. Haddad was originally scheduled to speak at the Galileo’s Legacy Conference at Missouri Western last spring, but a snowstorm forced the conference’s cancellation. The Galileo’s Legacy Conference is a joint project of the Departments of Biology, Philosophy and Religion at Missouri Western. It brings presenters to St. Joseph to discuss topics at the intersection of science, humanities and public policy.

For more information, contact Dr. Okapal at jokapal@missouriwestern.edu.

Missouri Western State University is a comprehensive regional university providing a blend of traditional liberal arts and professional degree programs. The university offers students-centered, high quality instruction that focuses on experience-based learning, community service, and state-of-the-art technology. Missouri Western is located in St. Joseph, Mo., and is committed to the educational, economic, cultural and social development of the region it serves. Visit www.missouriwestern.edu.