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Bioethicist Elizabeth Meade, associate professor of philosophy at Cedar Crest College, will speak on “The Ethics of Sex Selection” 6:30-7:30 p.m. today in the Oechsle Hall auditorium.
Free and open to the public, the talk is part of the McKelvy House Spring Lecture Series, “Our Modern World.” A reception will follow at McKelvy House.
The series will continue with Robert M. Seyfarth, professor and head of philosophy at University of Pennsylvania, discussing “Communication and the Minds of Monkeys” at Oechsle Hall 7 p.m. Monday. The series began Friday with a talk by Elaine Peeler Davis, principal of Montclair High School in New Jersey, on “How High School Reforms Address the Minority Achievement Gap” (see related story).
”People have been trying since prehistoric times to manipulate the process of conception to achieve a desired gender,” says Meade. “This effort to beat the odds is usually a result of gender ideologies preaching the value of one gender over another, but is experienced by people either in terms of personal preference or in terms of stringent economic necessity. But the efforts have seldom met with much success.
“In our own time, the issue of sex selection – and the ethical issues presented by it – has become more complex and more pressing. We have an increased technological capacity to pre-select the gender of our children, which requires us to confront head-on the moral justification of such a pursuit. But we also have the knowledge of crippling diseases like Tay-Sachs disease, which are themselves sex-selecting and which may provide a legitimate reason for a couple to want to choose to conceive only a child of a specific gender. This presentation will look at some of the technologies available for sex selection, and some of the reasons for seeking these technologies out. While examining the potential moral justification for sex selection, we will also inquire whether it is possible to put the genie back in the bottle: Now that these techniques are available, can we easily regulate for what purpose they are used?”
Meade is a specialist in ethics, biomedical ethics, history of philosophy, and the work of 20th century political philosopher Hannah Arendt. She co-edited The Ethical Life: Moral and Social Responsibility, a textbook published by Copley Press in 1998. Her recent publications include “Ethics Education: Connecting Learning to Socially Responsible Living,” in the journal Professional Ethics, spring 2000; and “The Commodification of Values,” an article in Hannah Arendt: Twenty Years Later, published by MIT Press in 1996.
Meade has presented on topics in theoretical ethics and ethics pedagogy at such national conferences as the Annual Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (1995), the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (1995, 1997, 1998), and Moral Education in a Diverse Society, a conference sponsored by the Kenan Ethics Program at Duke University (1998).
She serves on the Ethics Committee of the Visiting Nurse Association of Eastern Pennsylvania, as well as the steering committee of the Ethics Institute. She is Cedar Crest College’s representative to the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges’ Women’s Studies Coalition.
Meade earned doctoral and masters degrees in philosophy from Boston College in 1993 and 1987, respectively, and graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in German language and literature from Bryn Mawr College in 1984.
Since 1962, the McKelvy House Scholars Program has brought together Lafayette students with a wide range of majors and interests to reside in a historic off-campus house and share in intellectual and social activities. Weekly Sunday dinner discussions that engage the students in debate and exchange of ideas that continue long after the meals are over are the hallmark of the program.