Due to the travel restrictions in the context of COVID-19 it will be impossible to host the summer courses as planned in Spiez, Switzerland. As a result,
- The LoAC Course unfortunately has to be canceled in 2021.
- The MME Course will be held as a virtual classroom course as in 2020
More information on virtual Course on Military Medical Ethics can be found here. The application phase for the course will open in April/ May and we will post more detailed information and the program as it becomes available on our website and via the newsletter.
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The 10th workshop will take place as an Online Workshop via zoom from 26-28 April 2021 due to the ongoing travel restrictions and the situation with regard to COVID-19. The topical subject of the workshop will be
Medical Rules of Eligibility and
Medical Care under Resource Scarcity
The workshop is, as usual, co-organized by the ICMM Centre of Reference for Education on IHL and Ethics, the Medical Services Directorate of the Swiss Armed Forces, and the Zurich Center for Military Medical Ethics.
Places at the workshop are limited as we want to keep the format of the workshop as close as possible to the previous years, which includes time and opportunity for discussions. Participants will be selected with the aim of putting together a well-balanced group of speakers and participants to allow for productive discussions.
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The 8th ICMM Course on Military Medical Ethics in Times of Armed Conflict (Military Medical Ethics/ MME) will take place from 31 August – 04 September 2020. Due to the travel restrictions imposed by the response to COVID-19 by many countries, we unfortunately cannot organize the 2020 course in Spiez/ Switzerland as we usually do.
We decided to see the current situation as an opportunity to explore a new format of the course and to hold the course as a “virtual classroom course”.
The 22nd LOAC course, which was planned in the same week, unfortunately has to be cancelled this year. We invite you to join us next year.
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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic raises a number of important ethical questions, which may also emerge in the work of military health care personnel (HCP) as they are often part of the response to the pandemic. Therefore, the ICMM and its Center of Reference for Education on IHL and Ethics (RefC) in cooperation with the ZH Center for Military Medical Ethics (CMME) have decided to provide some guidance and resources on how to deal with the ethical issues.
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The book with the title "Ethics of Medical Innovation, Experimentation, and Enhancement in Military and Humanitarian Contexts" is now available as PDF and epub via Springer (LINK). The printed version is due to be published in April and will then also be available via your local bookstore or online book stores.
This book (edited by D. Messelken and D. Winkler) discusses ethical questions surrounding research and innovation in military and humanitarian contexts. It focuses on human enhancement in the military. Recently, the availability of medical enhancement designed to make soldiers more capable of surviving during conflict, as well as enabling them to defeat their enemies, has emerged. Innovation and medical research in military and humanitarian contexts may thus yield positive effects, but simultaneously leads to a number of highly problematic ethical issues.
The work contains contributions on medical ethics that take into account the specific roles and obligations of military and humanitarian health care providers and the ethical problems they encounter. They cover different aspects of research and innovation such as vaccine development, medical enhancement, compassionate and experimental drug use, research and application of new technologies such as wearables, “Humanitarian innovation” to cope with scarce resources, Biometrics, big data, etc.The book is of interest and importance to researchers and policy makers involved with human enhancement, medical research, and innovation in military and humanitarian missions.
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Did you know that we take part in a project that creates an online collection of scenarios for training and research in military medical ethics?
The aim of this MME scenario collection is to provide deploying military medical personnel and those who organise trainging and education with a tool to better prepare for future missions. In order to do so, we collect and make available cases, experiences, reports, and scenarios in a neutral database. In order for the colletion to grow, we hope that we can convince those returning from missions to (anonymously or not) contribute their experiences and share it with others.
- Access the MME Scenario Collection via https://scenarios.militarymedicalethics.ch
If you want to learn more, the International Review of the Armed Forces Medical Services has published an article that describes the MME Scenario Collection. You can read the article online via the following links:
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