By Betsy Fodor

What does it mean to be human? Who should decide when life is over? Should we as a society deliberately try to “improve man?”

These and similar questions were explored by students and faculty of St. Pius high School during a Symposium on Bioethics which was presented at the school December 3 through 5.

Guest speakers from diverse areas of medicine, biological science, public health service and the community offered 15 separate presentations during the three-day Symposium.

Among the speakers and their topics were Dr. Edward C. Lucy of Georgia State University on “Experimentation Ethics,” Dr. Naomi Baumslag of Emory University on “Human Experimentation;” Dr. Arthur Falek of the Georgia Mental Health Institute on “Human Genetics;” the Reverend Robert Gary, chaplain at Emory University Hospital on “Encounters with Death;” Sister Kristin Lancaster, RSM, administrator of St. Joseph’s Infirmary, on “Death and Dying;” Dr. James Keller of Emory University on “Death and the Physician;” and attorney Edward S. White on “Prolonging Life: the Right to Die.”

The series of programs was designed to stimulate student interest in the ethical and moral problems implicit in the recent technological advances in biological research.

The symposium concluded with a panel of priests of the archdiocese who discussed questions submitted by students during the first two days of the lectures.

The panel consisted of Father Matthew Kemp, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes; Father Robert L. Kinast of the archdiocesan Office of Religious Education; Father Richard Lopez, assistant pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, and Father Robert Comiskey, CSC, a doctoral student at Emory University.