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Health research is a global enterprise and international codes have guided its ethical conduct for more than 50 years - yet important questions such as "what is the ethical rationale for conducting studies in certain countries and not others?" still need to be answered.

Professor Eric Meslin, Director of the Indiana University Centre for Bioethics, will address these issues in a lecture at The University of Western Australia entitled "What in the World Does Ethics Have to do With Health Research? Some Musings on Whether Morality is Local or Global".

Professor Meslin, in Perth as part of UWA's visiting Professor-at-Large program, was Executive Director of the National Bioethics Advisory Committee appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1995 and charged with advising the White House and the Federal Government on a range of bioethics issues including cloning, stem cell research, international clinical trials, and genetics studies.

He will raise issues such as why research is conducted on some groups and not others, and how should science accommodate and respect local values and morals, at his free public lecture at 6pm on Thursday, August 21 at UWA's Social Sciences Lecture Theatre.

Professor Meslin has also been a consultant to the World Health Organisation, the US Observer Mission to UNESCO, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.  In 2007 he was appointed to the Board of Directors of Genome Canada.

Media references

Audrey Barton (Institute of Advanced Studies)  (+61 8)  6488 4797
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716