The Observer, February 10, 2006
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 16
Case bioethics professor reflects on achievements, future plans
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Winner of a Fulbright research award, author of numerous published articles, and assistant professor in the Department of Bioethics, Insoo Hyun, Ph.D. provides some insight on his research, teaching at Case, and his future plans.
First, how and why did you get into the field of bioethics?
I started off in a Ph.D. program in philosophy focusing on ethical theory, but I didn't really want to stay in a purely academic, philosophical field. I wanted to do something that touches on the lives of everyday people in some way. During graduate school I got involved in doing some research assistance for a very prominent bioethicist who was my dissertation advisor.
From working with him, I realized that there was this whole other field called bioethics that would allow me to do theoretical work in philosophy but also bridge over into more practical areas. It fit very well with the kind of career I wanted to have for myself – a mixture of academics and practical work.
Can you tell me about your past and present work and why you chose to specialize in those topics?
At the time when I was becoming interested in bioethics in graduate school, one of the main research projects that I worked on was the National Bioethics Advisory Commission paper commissioned by President Clinton on the ethics of human reproductive cloning. This was right after Dolly was cloned in 1997 and so I initially got my first interest, my first big introduction into bioethics through a cloning topic, a cloning controversy.
That always was something that I had interest in, and then what happened after Dolly was a new field of scientific research that came to be known as embryonic stem cell research. That got combined with reproductive cloning in the following way: scientists thought if you could get embryonic stem cells from clones of people, then you could have a source for genetically matched embryonic stem cells that would not be rejected if they ever developed therapies where they would have to transplant stem cells into patients.
Transplantable stem cells in the future would still run up against the problem of autoimmune rejection in the same way that transplants of organs would.
So if you could find a way to have, in theory, transplantable stem cells where the DNA came originally from the person who was sick, then that would be an enormous leap forward in an already very promising area of research. I got into embryonic stem cell research, again, through my interest in cloning, and that's where most of my research is focused these days.
How does it feel to be published in the same journals as your mentors and advisors?
It was something that I had always wanted to have happen to me. I didn't think it'd happen so soon. It's strange; I remember the first time I had a cover story in the top bioethics journal, the Hastings Center Report, back in 2002 ญญญ– it was my first submission to this journal and not only was it was accepted but it was the cover story.
It was very surprising to me that that happened so quickly. It's very rewarding to have my mentors and people that I studied in graduate school tell me that they read the article and that they enjoyed it.
How do you use your work in your everyday life?
I would say that I use just the kind of thinking that's involved in bioethics and in philosophy in my everyday life. It's critical reasoning and it's thinking clearly about how to express myself. It's also thinking clearly about what the key points are that people seem to be relying on when they present their points of view.
It's hard to pin down exactly specific instances where I use my training, but the thing about studying philosophy and critical reasoning is that you just can't help using it in your own thinking and in your own life. It just transforms the way that you think about your own opinions or other people's opinions.
Do you work more with medical students here or undergraduates?
It's a pretty even mix of med students, bioethics graduate students, and undergrads. I probably spend most of my time teaching the masters students and the undergrads.
How would you compare those three groups?
You have to teach in different ways because those three groups have somewhat different interests in bioethics, so if I'm teaching medical students or medical residents they obviously want to know practical applications. Of course they're interested in the background and the theoretical issues and historical issues in bioethics, maybe even some of the research ethics issues and all that. But what they fundamentally are there for in the class is how to become better doctors, better clinicians.
For the master's students, they have a much broader interest, some of them want to go into public health or other areas, and so in that we aim for a high level of discourse, expanding a very broad range of issues.
For the undergrads, this is for almost all of them the very first time, the very first contact that they have had with bioethics, so then obviously you can't work at such a high level as the graduate students, but I try to also provide a sampling of the issues involved.
How do you spend your free time?
With my kids, and I like to play music,and exercise. Normal guy stuff of someone who has little kids at home. Actually, sad to say, I spend most of my free time doing my research, because for me a lot of times my work doesn't feel like work. So if I didn't have to work I'd still be thinking about these issues and I would still want to write about these. It sounds nerdy, but sometimes my weekends are spent doing some of my work because I'm excited about it.
What is your ideal vacation?
A long cycling vacation through Tuscany With nothing but a credit card and clean clothes on my back.
Finally, your plans for the future?
My hope for the future is that I have something to contribute to stem cell research ethics that will have some impact on guiding scientists through a very safe path to their goals so that they don't get hung up on ethical issues that they ought to avoid. I hope that I can contribute to some way to what I think is a very important area of medical research.
