Recently the KIE said farewell to two visiting scholars, Daiane Martins Rocha (Brazil) and Florencia Moye Lopez (Mexico), and welcomed two more Prof. Xiang Yuqiao, Ph.D. (China) and Andem Effiong (US).

Daiane spent 2011 working on research for her dissertation, “Beneficence and Autonomy: Bioethical Issues in a Secular Society,” in the BRL. Working from a virtue ethics approach, she was delighted to attend Dr. Edmund Pellegrino’s Philosophy of Medicine class and to finish an article for publication. She has begun to translate Dr. Pellegrino’s book, For the Patient’s Good, into Portuguese. Daiane is a philosophy grad student at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil and will write her dissertation next year.

Trained in law in Mexico and in bioethics in Italy, Florencia spent the fall semester researching and writing an article entitled “Emerging Legal Solutions for the Medical Practice: The Conscientious Objection” to explore the relationship between conscience, health, and law. She also attended Dr. Pellegrino’s class. Ms. Moye has published several articles and one book about the institution of the family.

Dr. Xiang, Professor at The Research Institute of Ethics at Hunan Normal University of China, is a visiting Fulbright Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics this academic year. His current project concerns contemporary American philosophers’ theories of justice and their influence. His research spans meta-ethics, political ethics, and business ethics. He is the author of How to Construct an Eco-economic Ethics (2002), An Introduction to Western Meta-ethics (2006), The Transformation of American Ethical Trends (2006), The Rise of Ecological Economy in the Present China and its Ethical Significance (2007), Ethics in the Post-modern West (2011), as well as over 40 articles. He is now working on the issue of distributive justice as the most important part of his Fulbright project at Georgetown University and has a plan to write a book on the topic. His visit to Georgetown University will end in July.

Here until mid-February, 2012, Andem is continuing his research project entitled “Medical Futility and Advanced Care Planning for Cardiovascular Disease.” He is a masters candidate in the joint Union Graduate College/Mt. Sinai School of Medicine Bioethics Program (MSB expected June 2012) and holds a M.S. in biology/cell and molecular biology. Andem is an associate at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.