The 34th Annual Florida Bioethics Conference: Debates, Decisions, Solutions
Friday, April 10, 2025
Session 1 | Session 2 | Session 3 | Session 4
9:00 AM | Welcome and Introduction
Sergio Litewka, MD, MPH
Director, Florida Bioethics Network; Associate Professor, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy
Rosario Isasi JD, MPH
Director, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy
9:10 AM | Session 1, Ray Moseley, PhD: The Roots and Future of the Florida Bioethics Network
The Florida Bioethics Network is dedicated to the understanding and resolution of ethical and legal problems arising in health care and research across Florida's hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, managed care organizations, and teaching institutions. This session revisits the FBN origins and examines its evolving role in supporting ethics services in a changing and evolving health care settings.
9:40 AM | Session 2, Michael T. Huber, MD: The (Futile?) Attempts to Address Futility at End-of-Life
Dr Huber will review the concept of clinical futility including its emergence in bioethical literature and attempts to develop coherent definitions. He will illustrate the flaws in these proposed definitions and chronicle the turn to hospital-level processes and mediation of conflict around requested medical interventions. Then he will discuss variation in these processes across hospitals, factors contributing to this variation, and paths to increase consensus approaches.
10:30 AM | Session 3, Cathy Purvis Lively, RN, JD, Dr. of Bioethics: When ICE knocks at the hospital door: Florida's hospitals between immigration policy and the duty to care
Laws restricting healthcare access raise profound ethical concerns when they compel healthcare institutions and professionals to engage in immigration enforcement. Anti-immigration statutes increasingly place clinicians and hospitals in an untenable position: navigating compliance with state and federal mandates while upholding core professional duties of care, confidentiality, and respect for persons.
This presentation examines the ethical dilemmas that arise when healthcare settings become sites of immigration surveillance. It analyzes how such policies erode patient privacy, undermine trust in the clinician–patient relationship, and generate broader societal harms. Particular attention focuses on Florida's legislative initiatives requiring hospitals to inquire about patients' immigration status, collect and report data on undocumented patients, and disclose associated costs to the state. These requirements transform clinical encounters into points of legal vulnerability and heighten fear among immigrant communities.
The analysis also addresses the January 2025 rescission of the "sensitive locations" policy, which removed protections limiting immigration enforcement in healthcare settings. This fundamentally alters the moral landscape of clinical practice and raises questions about complicity, professional integrity, and institutional responsibility.
The presentation outlines ethically grounded strategies that healthcare professionals, administrators, and clinical ethicists can adopt to mitigate harm, protect patient trust, and support immigrant patients' rights while remaining within legal constraints.
11:20 AM | Session 4, Jonathan Moreno, PhD: Bioethics and the Rule Based International Order
The field of bioethics emerged as both a creature and a key element of the post–World War II rules-based order—an international system organized around principles of open markets, liberal democracy, and multilateral organizations. Yet this order faces fundamental challenges.
In his new book Absolutely Essential (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553377/absolutely-essential/), Dr. Moreno examines what the end of this global political system means for bioethics and beyond. Drawing on four decades of experience in the field, this presentation raises critical questions about the future of bioethics amid the COVID-19 pandemic's aftermath and the fundamental reordering of global alliances.
BIOS
Ray Moseley, PhD
Program in Bioethics, Law and Medical Professionalism University of Florida College of Medicine. Director of the University of Florida Health Clinical Ethics Consultation
Dr. Moseley received his Master’s Degree in Philosophy and Medical Ethics at the University of Tennessee and completed his Doctorate in Bioethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Moseley is the Director of the UF Health Clinical Ethics Consultation and holds the Grace H. Osborn Professorship in Bioethics and is a member of the Bioethics, Law and Medical Professionalism Program, UF College of Medicine
He is the Founder and Senior Board Member of the Florida Bioethics Network (FBN), and plays a key role in the development of the FBN as a significant statewide resource. Dr. Moseley is an expert on hospital ethics services/committees and research ethics, and he serves as vice chair of the UF IRB and is the co-author of the FBN Guidelines for Ethics Committees, and the author of the CITI Training modules for members of clinical ethics committees/consultants. He regularly consults with national and international governments/institutions on the development of health care ethics services and human subject’s protections programs.
Michael T. Huber, MD, MD, HEC-C
Medical Director, Palliative Medicine Ambulatory Services; Medical Director, Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Dr. Huber is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Chair of the Ethics Committee at UHealth. Dr. Huber’s research interests include the intersection of bioethics, serious illness care, and informatics. Dr. Huber’s work examines ways to measure and improve the quality of serious illness care and advance care planning using the electronic health record. He also examines hospital-level variability in serious illness and end-of-life care with a particular interest in code status orders and life-sustaining medical interventions.
Cathy Purvis Lively, RN, JD, Dr. of Bioethics
Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Dr. Cathy Purvis Lively’s professional and educational background combines healthcare, law, and ethics. In healthcare she has experience as a critical care nurse in adult and neonatal intensive care, case management, and as a program director. As an attorney her practice has been in family law and mediation. She is a faculty/teaching associate with the School of Professional Studies for Bioethics at Columbia University and a Peer Reviewer/Editor Columbia University’s Voices in Bioethics and a Visting Scholar at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy. Dr. Lively received her JD from Nova Southeastern University, an MS in Bioethics from Columbia University, and a Doctorate in Bioethics from Loyola University.
Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD
David and Lyn Silfen University Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania; Adjunct Faculty Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Moreno is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the Hastings Center, and a member of the Committee on Human Rights of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. He has served as a staff member or advisor to three U.S. presidential commissions, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee. He is a member of the Bayer Bioethics Council and a senior advisor for the Center for Health, Ethics and Society at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
In 2018 the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a recipient of the Benjamin Rush Medal from William and Mary Law School and the Dr. Jean Mayer Award for Global Citizenship from Tufts University. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Greenwall Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the U.S. Department of Defense.
His forthcoming book, Understanding Bioethics, will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2027. Among his previous books are Absolutely Essential: Bioethics and the Rules-Based International Order; Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die, co-authored with Amy Gutmann; Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans; and The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, named a Best Book of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews. His book Mind Wars formed part of the basis of The Bourne Legacy.
Moreno has published more than a thousand papers, articles, and op-eds in venues including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Science, Nature, and Foreign Affairs. He was co-host of Making the Call, an Endeavor Content podcast, and served on President Barack Obama's transition team in 2008-09.
