The videos of the talks at the recent meeting in Pittsburgh on COVID are now available for free on YouTube. The links can be found at this page, also easily found by going to the Resources/Videos tab on the CSS site. The bios of the speakers can be found at this post.
Unfortunately, video of the speakers was not recorded, but we have the audio and slides, with Q&A. We do have video of the panel discussion, which will be posted on the CSS site soon.
All who attended the meeting appreciated the spirit of the meeting and the wealth of information imparted. My own brief review is the following:
Greg Poland (Mayo Clinic). Probably the biggest takeaway for me was the seriousness of COVID symptoms for many people, that it is not just to be taken like a tough seasonal flu. I was already fairly familiar with some of the ethical questions, but if you have not studied this, he gave a good survey of the ethics of vaccines in general.
Rick Zimmerman (Pitt School of Medicine). Among other things, he directly addressed the ethical question of past use of fetal tissue and stem cell lines in vaccine development. He also gave us an inside look at how the CDC makes decisions. Along with Tim Girard’s talk, (and Jonathan Uy’s discussion as part of the panel) we got a very good look at how there are many checks and balances in the “system.”
Tim Girard (Pitt School of Medicine). Tim gave a very good overview of how scientists establish whether something really works, and how doctors who work in clinics can be fooled into thinking certain things work when they don’t. He also discussed how it personally hurts Christians in medical research when their findings are dismissed by other Christians based on a few blog posts or hearsay.
David Snoke (Pitt). I got good feedback from several people that my grid for decision making based relative certainty versus consequences was helpful. No medical info as such, but a general discussion of how we are ethical responsible to act in some cases even when we don’t know the whole story.