Bioethics Bowl Team makes it to Elite Eight

The University’s four-member Bioethics Bowl team made it to the Elite Eight in the National Undergraduate Bioethics Bowl at Tallahassee, Fla., earlier this month.

Members Ashley Van Order, Mikayla Keating, William Kennedy and Jacob Moore won five of the nine debates in which they competed and placed eighth overall in the competition hosted by Florida State University. Dr. Ian Young, philosophy, who coaches the team along with Dr. Christian Coons, accompanied the team to the competition.

In the first round, BGSU’s team defeated teams from the University of Miami and Loyola University Chicago and narrowly lost to Dartmouth College. In the quarterfinal round, the team lost to the University of Denver, the team that placed third overall.

The competition was part of the annual National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference, which looked at “Global Medicine, Social Justice and Bioethics.” Among the bioethical dilemmas BGSU debated in the bowl this year were case studies about an individual who refuses his psychotropic medications (Loyola Chicago), the possibility of creating a “love pill” to help people form and maintain attachments with each other (University of Miami), and refusing to force-feed detainees at Guantanamo Bay (Dartmouth). During the quarterfinal competition, they presented on the case about clinical trials for the Ebola virus disease. Debates were judged on deliberative thoughtfulness, identification and discussion of central ethical dimensions and clarity and intelligibility.

Other teams that competed were DePauw, Doral College, Florida State, Georgetown University, The Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola University New Orleans, Lynchburg College, Macalester College, New Mexico State University, Rutgers University, Samford University, San Jose State University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of California Los Angeles and the University of Tampa.