AMWA and Ethics

If you look through the AMWA annual conference program, you may notice one word appearing again and again.

Ethics.

It’s there on the very first page, where AMWA President Melanie Fridl Ross mentions the role of medical communicators in upholding the highest ethical principles

It’s there in the title of the keynote speech: Re-creation: Ethics and the Biotechnological Restructuring of Life, which is to be delivered by Paul Root Wolpe, PhD, a professor of bioethics at Emory University and director of Emory’s Center for Ethics.

There are the open sessions, “Clinical Trial Ethics: Placebos and Other Issues,” and “Publication Ethics: Moving Beyond Authorship.”

There are the workshops:

• Preparing CME Materials: Concepts, Strategies, and Ethical Issues
• Ethics of Communicating Regulated Drug Development Activities
• Ethics for Regulatory and Research Communicators
• Fundamentals of Ethics and Practical Application
• Ethics for Science and Medicine Communicators
• Ethical Standards in Medical Publication

A self-study course “Essential Ethics for Medical Communicators” is also being launched at this conference.

I had an opportunity recently to speak with Cindy Hamilton, a past president of AMWA, who teaches some of the ethics workshops and has been a driving force in AMWA’s increased emphasis on ethics.

Listen to the Audio Interview With Cindy Hamilton.