Jul 20, 2007
AMBI's journal, The American Journal of Bioethics [AJOB], has been ranked #1 among all journals in medical ethics in the 2007 list of the highest impact journals in academia. With an Impact Factor of 3.379, the Journal is now cited almost twice as frequently as any other journal in medical ethics, and is #1 of 28 journals in ethics, and is more frequently than many well-known biomedical journals such as Academic Medicine, Critical Care, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Fertility & Sterility, and Health Economics.

In other news AMBI Director Glenn McGee has been named one of the ten most influential and innovative people in Tech Valley, the "Hot Ten," by Albany Chamber of Commerce.

Jul 20, 2007
The American Journal of Bioethics [AJOB], led by Editor-in-Chief and AMBI Director Dr. Glenn McGee, has been ranked #1 among all journals in medical ethics by the newly-released ISI Citation Index. With an Impact Factor of 3.379, the Journal enters an entirely new echelon of journals in terms of its readership and effect on the academic and medical world. For example, AJOB is now cited almost twice as frequently as any other journal in medical ethics, is #1 of 28 journals in ethics, and is more frequently than many well-known biomedical journals such as Academic Medicine, Critical Care, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Fertility & Sterility, and Health Economics. In fact, compared with all journals of medicine, only 16 general/internal medicine journals are more highly ranked (4 more in critical care medicine, and none in emergency medicine).

The upshot? AJOB, which comes out of the effort not only of its editor in chief but even more of its Executive Editor Sean Philpott, and the AMBI staff at Albany Medical College in general, really demonstrates the incredible growth of Albany Medical College's influence in biomedical science and in the community. Just this week, AJOB was cited in both The New Yorker and in a number of news stories about pediatric ethics.

May 08, 2007
Linda MacDonald Glenn JD LLM, AMBI Faculty, has been made a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, an honorary organization of attorneys, judges and law professors whose professional, public and private careers have demonstrated outstanding dedication to the welfare of their communities and to the highest principles of the legal profession.

Emily Carroll, the top graduate - Summa cum Laude and top GPA - of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and our very first Pfizer Fellow in Bioethics, has been accepted as the bioethics fellow at the Washington, D.C. Center for American Progress' bioethics division, led by Jonathan Moreno, where she will spend the summer before heading to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study "Disaster Bioethics" in her graduate program. Our first undergraduate product of the AMBI "inter-institutional bioethics program," Emily co-authored several papers including one in Nature Medicine with Dr. McGee and has helped AMBI pioneer bioethics between AMBI (Albany Med) and RPI, according to Dr. Shirley Jackson, President of RPI and former Secretary of Energy.

Apr 21, 2007
The Executive Board of the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health, Alpha Chapter (at Johns Hopkins) of the most highly regarded honorary society in public health, has elected Hopkins graduate and AMBI faculty member Dr. Summer Johnson to membership in the Society. AMBI faculty member Dr. Elisa Gordon is also a member of Delta Omega, elected to the Lambda chapter at University of Illinois Chicago in 2005, as are Mary Gallant and Louise-Anne McNutt, both SUNY School of Public Health and AMBI faculty members and both elected to the Alpha Gamma chapter of U Albany, and Wayne Triner, MPH graduate of SUNY School of Public Health.

Mar 15, 2007
Congrats to Dr. Summer Johnson, Assistant Professor and interim director of graduate studies, who has been selected by the National Human Genome Research Institute to be the keynote speaker at the Institute's IRB retreat. Her topic will be "Ethical Issues in Social Science Research," April 19th at 12:00 Noon; the retreat will be held not at the NIH main campus but at the Kentlands Mansion in Gathersburg, Maryland. For more information contact Dr. Johnson at 518-262-6082.

Jan 17, 2007
• Congrats to AMBI director Glenn McGee, named by Albany Business Review to its list of the 40 most influential Capital District leaders under the age of 40. Dr. McGee was named to the 40 most influential Philadelphians under 40 in 2004 by the Philadelphia Business Review. Said McGee, "Well at least now I can prove that I am under 40"

• New York Department of Education has officially approved the new AMBI Masters of Science in Bioethics and AMBI's joint JD/MS health law and bioethics program with Albany Law School. It is an incredibly innovative new online bioethics program in cooperation with The American Journal of Bioethics, Apple Computer, Apple's 'iTunes University' and the University of Pennsylvania, including iPod-based supplementary materials for each course, as well as interviews with leading bioethicists, online case studies with video interviews and PDF charts (de-identified, of course). For more information visit http://masters.bioethics.org

Oct 02, 2006
• The Institute has an excellent opportunity in empirical bioethics, a Research Assistant position appropriate to the post-doctoral or post-masters student with some empirical training who is ready to work in what amounts to an intensive lab in empirical bioethics under the direction of Elisa Gordon. email elisa.gordon@bioethics.net to apply

• The Institute is also - immediately - searching for a Director of Graduate Studies to build, administer, teach and mentor in our graduate programs, alongside a faculty that has grown by four this year alone. More information is available here.

• AMBI faculty John Balint and Sean Philpott co-edited a book with others entitled Ethics and Epidemics, the product of a conference of the same name.

Aug 17, 2006
• Sean Philpott comments on the announcement that The American Journal of Bioethics, edited at AMBI, has been ranked #1 in terms of its impact factor, as ISI identifies AJOB as the most cited journal in the field.

• Sheila Otto has finished a multi-media guide to Exploring Ethical Dilemmas for nurses, published by Mosby/Elsevier (2006).

Jul 15, 2006
AMBI is delighted to announce that in August we will be joined by yet another new faculty member, Elisa Gordon PhD MPH, currently an associate professor in the Strich School of Medicine of Loyola Chicago. Dr. Gordon is currently conducting a study of ethical issues associated with health disparities, particularly in the case of transplantation, under an NIH K01 award from the NIH National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Elisa has just been named leader of the Empirical Research Subcommittee of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and conducted the bioethics society's self-study about funding from corporate sources. She trained at Case Western Reserve University, University of Chicago, and then was admitted to Chicago's MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics fellowship program. She then received the M.P.H. at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Jun 16, 2006
Welcome to Summer Johnson of Johns Hopkins University, the newest faculty member in AMBI. Summer will join the Institute in January, as noted in the education round up in the Times-Union, at which time she will "will take a lead role in the development of research on ethical issues in biomedical technology .... Her focus will be on areas of research excellence in Albany like neuroimaging and brain-computer interfaces, nanotechnology and biodefense. Johnson's mission will include building the bioethics institute's programs with the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, GE Healthcare/AMC Neurosciences Institute and Brain Computer Interface group of the Wadsworth Center."

May 24, 2006
Immediate Job Opening: Administrative Coordinator for the Institute. This person will work alongside the Director in the overall administration of the Institute. Responsibilities will include providing administrative support for the director, overseeing administrative staff and departmental operations, coordinating new educational programs, lectures and events, departmental budgeting and financial reporting, coordinating grants administration. For more information on this position, which must be filled by June 15, contact Dr. McGee at mcgee@amc.edu.

Apr 09, 2006
We Are Hiring. The Institute is searching for five new faculty and staff members, as well as summer interns and other research assistants. For more information on our major faculty searches, as well as other positions in bioethics, see the AJOB list of positions available.

Mar 08, 2006
Science of February 3 included a special article "Lessons of the Stem Cell Scandal" by director Glenn McGee and colleagues. He authored another piece on the matter in The Scientist, "Lies, Damn Lies ... and Scientific Misconduct."

Mar 07, 2006
Two major new initiatives at AMBI have received funding: A $350,000 grant from the Charitable Leadership Foundation to fund a multidisciplinary program aimed at reducing length of stay in the ICU, and a $50,000 grant from the Conley Foundation to develop on-line clinical ethics training for physicians.

Mar 07, 2006
The first Annual Report for the Alden March Bioethics Institute is available online.

Jan 30, 2006
Dr. Bonnie Steinbock explains in the current issue of NJEM that payments for donation of egg for research is ethically acceptable.

Jan 03, 2006
Dr. Glenn McGee write his first regular column for The Scientist on the topic of Intelligent Design. More on his article, Design: More Intelligent Every Day

Dec 02, 2005
Dr. Glenn McGee discusses egg donation on WAMC - Northeast Public Radio. Listen.

Oct 25, 2005
The Institute's Glenn McGee and Penn bioethicist Arthur Caplan debuted a new column on bioethics for Hearst Newspapers in the Sunday Perspectives section of Albany Times-Union.

Oct 25, 2005
The Institute's Glenn McGee and Penn bioethicist Arthur Caplan debuted a new column on bioethics for Hearst Newspapers in the Sunday Perspectives section of Albany Times-Union.