College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Perfect fit

Clark Wolf can't image a better place to work than Iowa State's bioethics program
Bioethics programs dot the landscape at colleges and universities throughout the country.

Most, however, focus exclusively on medical ethics and entirely neglect environmental and agricultural issues. Few bioethics programs concentrate their efforts on agriculture or environmental issues.

That, says Clark Wolf, is what attracted him to Iowa State and the bioethics program within the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.

"This is a very unique program," says the newly hired director of the program and associate professor of philosophy and religious studies. "Iowa State has a historical strength in agriculture and biotechnology and the Iowa State bioethics program has been a powerful influence because it has focused attention on ethical issues in agriculture, environmental protection and biotechnology."

For Wolf, that made his move from the University of Georgia to Iowa State a natural one.

"Clearly this program fits my interests better than any other bioethics program in the country," he said.

Wolf's own research interests in bioethics lies at the intersection of ethical theory, political philosophy and the philosophy of law.

"I am most interested in those issues in bioethics that touch on concrete tools of policy and decision analysis, and which bring to bear current work in ethical theory and political philosophy," he says. "Good bioethics must first be good philosophy, so bioethicists must be engaged with current work in ethical theory. Responsible work in philosophy and public policy must similarly be connected with the best work in political and legal philosophy, and must incorporate an articulate understanding of the best theories of policy analysis."

The Iowa State program is one, which over the past 15 years has gained an international reputation for integrating ethics across the life science curriculum. Wolf says most of the credit for that goes to Gary Comstock, the man he is replacing, who is now directing a similar program at North Carolina State University.

"Gary did something very wonderful and unique with bioethics the Iowa State bioethics program," Wolf said. "I hope to continue the historical mission of the program, which has expanded the presence of bioethics teaching in courses across the curriculum. But I also hope that the Iowa State bioethics program can become a resource for policy makers and for the public, by bringing attention to environmental and ethical issues, and by raising the level of education and debate about environmental and agricultural policy."

Wolf hopes to continue Iowa State's outstanding bioethics tradition that Comstock started. He also plans to continue offering a campus-wide bioethics faculty conference and the University’s popular Bioethics Institute.

Those institutes have trained life science faculty members at Iowa State and at institutions throughout the world how ethical issues can be introduced into the classroom. The expansion of bioethics into the life science curriculum at Iowa State and the creation of a colloquium series on bioethics topics are other goals of Wolf.

"I hope to identify ways that Iowa State's curriculum can productively be expanded to include even more bioethics issues," he said. "I also plan to work to expand faculty representation in bioethics, and not just in this department (philosophy and religious studies).

"This is a field that requires knowledge, expertise and input from many different academic discipline."

Wolf is eager to pursue interaction and cooperation between the bioethics program and other organizations and departments on campus.

A large proportion of literature in bioethics focuses on individual decision-making, and that legal, economic, and public policy issues have received less attention than they deserve according to Wolf. He hopes to move the discipline and the program in that direction.

"I would like to expand the bioethics program to enhance the focus on agricultural and environmental policy," he said. "But these are controversial issues. Public discussion of biotechnology and bioethics are often driven by fear of the unknown, and by people’s impression that biotechnology is strange or unnatural or dangerous."

Establishing a dialogue among people who don’t understand these issues is one of Wolf's goals. He plans to promote scientifically and ethically informed understanding of the risks and the promise of biotechnology.

"Hopefully this will help us develop ethically informed and sustainable agricultural policies," he said. "An important role for any ethics program is to help us to evaluate and understand the activities we regularly engage in.

"Given Iowa State's overwhelming strength in agricultural sciences, biotechnology and related fields, where better than here to pursue a program focused on ethical issues in agriculture and the environment?"