Bioscience conference to discuss SARS
The gathering will be held at the Hawaii Convention Center
Some of the "great challenges and opportunities in contemporary medicine" will be discussed next week at the second annual Hawaii BioScience Conference, says the event's organizer.
The John A. Burns School of Medicine will host the meetings at the Hawai'i Convention Center. Dr. Edwin Cadman, former dean of the medical school and conference organizer, said about 400 to 500 participants are expected each day of the two-day conference.
Major topics will include emerging infectious diseases such as bird flu and SARS, the ethics of using stem cells to regenerate and repair organs, and death and dying issues, such as assisted suicide.
Speakers include:
» Dr. Leroy Hood of the Institute for Systems Biology, National Academy of Sciences.
» Bruce Alberts, president emeritus from the National Academy of Sciences, professor of biochemistry and biophysics, University of California-San Francisco.
» Arthur Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics and director, Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania.
Doctors and scientists will participate from Stanford, Harvard and Yale universities, the National Cancer Center Research Institute, Genome Institute of Singapore, Jikei University School of Medicine of Tokyo and the UH medical school.
Workshops will be held Sunday at the new medical school in Kakaako to prepare participants for material presented at the main meetings the next two days. Gov. Linda Lingle will host an "invitation only" reception at Washington Place Monday night.
Dr. Moon Park, from Clinical Labs of Hawaii, provided 10 scholarships for high school students and three for high school teachers to attend the conference. Dr. George Hui, professor in the JABSOM Department of Tropical Medicine, is organizing the high school students. He can be reached at 692-1609 or 392-5542, or by e-mail at ghui@hawaii.edu.