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OVERVIEW FACULTY STAFF PROGRAMS STUDENTS CALENDAR DIRECTIONS LINKS	Founded in 1987 as the Center for Medical Ethics, and given an expanded mission and renamed in 1998, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics and Health Law in Pittsburgh, PA, is committed to bringing together scholars and researchers from a variety of disciplines to cooperate in addressing issues in bioethics and law from both theoretical and clinical perspectives. The Center is founded on the premise that the questions posed by contemporary healthcare dilemmas are not the province of any single discipline but require the collaborative integration of insights garnered from history, law, medicine, philosophy, and the social sciences. The Center is not a policy-making or advisory body. Rather, it is committed to in-depth analysis of the complex legal and ethical issues surrounding the health care process. Technology has changed the very boundaries and possibilities of life. Scientific discoveries have blurred the traditional distinctions among birth, life, and death as well as given us a vast array of new treatments to combat pain and suffering. Whether to deploy a specific technology raises serious ethical and legal issues at the societal, institutional, professional, and personal levels. The decision-making process at each of these levels must be refined in order to address these needs. This process invites renewed concern for perennial issues, such as the proper roles and rights of patients, physicians, and investigators in selecting a course of treatment. These challenges require the focused efforts of thinkers and investigators from the many disciplines devoted to the study of the human condition. Only in this way can the profound ethical and legal questions examined within the health care system receive just and enduring resolutions.
	3708 Fifth Avenue Medical Arts Building, Suite 300 Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3405	Phone: (412) 647-5700 Fax: (412) 648-5877 bioethic@pitt.edu
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