$20 Million for Your Thoughts

“The decision on how to apply our biotechnological powers is a profoundly important ethical conversation to have,” said Paul Wolpe, director of Emory's Center for Ethics.

Image: Joann Vitelli

The Emory Center for Ethics plans to raise up to $20 million to transform the two-decade-old institute into a global think tank on ethical issues.

“Atlanta is an international business center,” Paul Wolpe, the center’s director said. “It needs a world-class ethics presence.”Being a global business hub and having a cluster of universities and research centers, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, makes Atlanta a natural congregating point for business and biomedical ethicists.

Emory’s Center for Ethics aims to be not just a place of academic scholarship, but a resource for the community—business, nonprofits and, government, said R. Anthony Joseph, president of Atlanta-based Concessions International LLC.

The center plays an indirect economic-development role, enhancing the city’s reputation as a global center of culture and thought, Joseph said.

The importance of having an ethics program as an educational institution seems more evident today than ever before, noted Emory's president James Wagner, who was appointed vice chairman of President Barack Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues last November.

“It does appear over the last decade or so that we’ve suffered the consequences of people who have not had a well-developed facility with the practice of ethics,” he said.

For more on Emory University's plans to expand its ethics program, click here for the full story from the Atlanta Business Chronicle (subscription required).