CFP: Ethics of Military Medical Innovation, Experimentation, and Enhancement

The ICMM Centre of Reference for Education on IHL and Ethics, the Medical Services Directorate of the Swiss Armed Forces, and the Center for Military Medical Ethics at Zurich University are pleased to announce the 8th annual ICMM workshop on Military Medical Ethics.

Ethics of Military Medical Innovation, Experimentation, and Enhancement
3-5 May 2018 at Forum Lilienberg in Ermatingen (CH).

Call for Papers

Innovation by using new medical methods and experimentation with unapproved drugs occur in military or humanitarian contexts for different reasons: one may be to cope with scarce resources when the usual means are just not available; another rationale can be to gain advantages by adopting the latest methods or drugs available.

Historically, military medicine has generated a number of novel treatments which have gone on to be widely used in civil medicine. Recently, the possibility of medical enhancement to make soldiers more capable of surviving during conflict and defeating their enemies has emerged, with both positive expectations and ethically questionable implications. The development of new therapeutic approaches in a military environment and the use of medical enhancement raise important ethical questions related to human experiments in medicine.

Among the ethical issues in the areas of military medical innovation, experimentation, and enhancement is that of informed consent, which is even more acute in the military and humanitarian contexts, where possible subjects of research may either be perceived to be not fully autonomous (soldiers) or where they are part of a vulnerable population (in disaster relief or other humanitarian emergencies).

We invite contributions on medical ethics or legal aspects which take into account the specific roles and obligations of military and humanitarian health care providers, and that cover one the areas of our main topic, for example:

• Medical enhancement
• Compassionate use and experimental drugs
• Research and application of new technologies as well as telemedicine, wearables, etc.
• “Humanitarian innovation” to cope with scarce resources
• Biometrics, big data, etc.

We equally encourage reports from the field (e.g. case studies) as well as philosophical papers or legal analyses. Presentations are expected to last 25 minutes in order to leave enough time for plenary discussions.

Application

Please send your paper proposals/ abstracts (~200-300 words) together with a short CV via email to [email protected] no later than 15th January 2018.

• We will notify all applicants until 9th February 2018 whether a proposal has been accepted.
• For all selected speakers we cover the full conference fee as well as their travel expenses (economy class).

Full CfP as PDF at https://melac.ch/images/PDF/LILI2018-CfP.pdf