2007


forth Annual Pro-Life Science and Technology Conference

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Engineers Club - 110 E. Monument Avenue - Dayton, OH 45402

All biographies current at time of conference.

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Paula Westwood  

Invocation and Welcome

Paula Westwood has served as Executive Director of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Right to Life Educational Foundation since September 2002. Before joining Right to Life, she was involved with pro-life and political activities for several decades at the grassroots level through familiar activities such as sidewalk counseling, Life Chains, political involvement for pro-life candidates, county political Executive Committee membership, and support of pregnancy care centers.

Before coming to Right to Life, Paula's professional experience included online and print publishing and communications-related skills. She has done freelance reporting; technical writing and editing for Cincinnati Bell Information Systems (now Convergys); server administration and web site development for Online Inc. (later acquired by Information Today); plus web site design and development for her own company.

Paula has been married to Greg for 28 years and they have three daughters: Rachel, Abigail, and Mary.

Denise Mackura, JD

Ohio Right to Life

Legal history of Supreme Court cases affecting abortion and "reproductive freedom"

Denise Mackura is executive director of Ohio Right to Life. She has been an activist in the pro-life movement for more than 30 years. She has served on the Boards of the Chicago Volunteer Legal Services, the National Lawyers Association, St. Joseph School (Chicago) and as a member of the Illinois State Bar Association's Individual Rights & Civil Liberties Section Counsel. In addition to legal counsel to the Ohio House Reference Committee, her professional experience includes teaching government, political science as well as other courses at several colleges, a private law practice, directing government relations programs for non-profit associations, & establishing a free legal clinic. Denise served for three years as senior legislative counsel for Americans United for Life and is currently the Chair of the Life Issues Section of the National Lawyers Association. Ms. Mackura received her juris doctor degree in 1977 from Cleveland State-Cleveland Marshall College of Law and is licensed to practice law in Ohio and Illinois.

Don Humphreys

Restraining the Web: Some Thoughts on Internet Activism

humphreys.pdf

Don Humphreys recently joined Cedarville University as the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning after spending over 15 years in the corporate world as both executive and consultant. In addition to his responsibilities in the Center, Don serves as Associate Professor of Language and Literature and continues his consulting work as a Senior Instructional Designer with S4NetQuest, an eLearning firm based in Columbus, Ohio.

Don has a degree in English/Professional Writing from Cedarville, an M.S. in Technical Communication from Southern Polytechnic University, and an M.A. in Instructional Design and Technology from The Ohio State University. He is currently completing an M.A. in Systematic Theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary.

His career as a Technical Writer, Usability Consultant, and Instructional Designer has enabled him to work with companies such as IBM, Bank One, Claremont Technology Group, and Usertech. He has also taught courses at Cedarville University, Ohio State, Columbus State, and Cornerstone University.

Dennis Michael Sullivan, MD, MA, FACS

Embryonic Stem Cells from Non-Destructive Sources: A Way Out of the Ethical Quagmire? (Awarded best presentation)

sullivan.pdf
sullivan-stemcell.pdf

Dr. Sullivan is a Professor of Biology at Cedarville University, Cedarville, Ohio, where he teaches human biology and bioethics. He received his M.D. from Case Western Reserve and an MA in bioethics from Trinity Graduate College.

Dr Sullivan served in the U.S. Army as a staff surgeon at the Blanchfield Army Community Hospital, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He and his family served for twelve years as missionaries with Baptist Mid-Missions, in Haiti and the Central African Republic. A major civil conflict in C.A.R. in 1996 forced a return to the United States. Dr. Sullivan then joined the biology faculty at Cedarville University where he is now Director of the Center for Bioethics.

He is a member of the American Board of Surgery, the American College of Surgeons, the American Medical Association, the Christian Medical Association, the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, and the American Scientific Affiliation. He has authored numerous articles in Ethics and Medicine and other journals. He continues to travel, and has conducted two short-term medical mission trips to Africa and two teaching tours of medical schools in Vietnam.

He and his wife Barbara live in Beavercreek, Ohio. They have three daughters.

Father Larry Gearhart

St Michael - Immaculate Conception

Survey of Technical & Moral Issues in Stem Cell Research

gearhart.pdf

Father Larry Gearhart is the pastor of two small country parishes in Champaign County, Ohio: St Michael’s in Mechanicsburg and Immaculate Conception in North Lewisburg. Prior to that, he served as associate pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes in Cincinnati and St Albert the Great in Kettering. Before entering Mt St Mary’s Seminary in 1997 he was a systems engineer for TRW. He has a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Fr Larry is deeply interested in foundational issues in the Catholic faith.

Rita Marker

Keynote: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide and Health Care Decisions: Legal and Practical Aspects

Rita Marker has been the executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide since it began in l987. She was among the first to be profiled in the American Medical Association's American Medical News during its series on "people making news in an era of dramatic change in medicine."

Rita Marker is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Deadly Compassion. She is a contributor to Contemporary Perspectives on Rational Suicide and the author of articles that have appeared in numerous publications, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Detroit News, Journal of Pharmacy Technology, and USA Today.

Marker is a former adjunct professor of Political Science & Ethics at the University of Steubenville, Ohio. She has made presentations and debated in Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, France, Belgium, England, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Switzerland, Slovenia and the United States.

She has been interviewed on hundreds of radio stations, including ABC News, CBS This Morning, NBC News, CNN News, Crossfire, Larry King, RAI TV (Italian National Television), Sixty Minutes (Australia), and The Fifth Estate (Canada).

Rita Marker is a practicing attorney. She is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Paul Byrne, MD

Is "Brain Death" True Death?

byrne.pdf

Dr. Paul Byrne married Shirley (deceased) during the year he began his internship at St. Louis University Hospitals. They are the parents of 12 children -- and grandparents of 27(!)

Dr. Byrne is Board Certified in Pediatrics and Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine. He is currently Director of Pediatrics and Neonatology at St. Charles Mercy Hospital and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Medical University of Ohio in Toledo, OH. He has also been on the faculty of Medical Schools of St. Louis University, Creighton University and Oral Roberts University.

Dr. Byrne has written publications and abstracts for medical journals, law literature and the lay press. Many deal with “brain death”, euthanasia and abortion. He is the writer and producer of the film, Continuum of Life. He is a co-editor of the book Beyond Brain Dead. He has been a guest columnist for USA Today and other newspapers, and opposed Dr. Kevorkian on Crossfire.

He was the president of the Catholic Medical Association of USA for 97-98. Since 1967 he has given testimony to eight state legislatures.

Jay Johansen

An opinionated discussion on web site design

johansen.pdf

Jay Johansen runs a pro-life web site, Pregnant Pause, is communications director for Greene County Right to Life, and is a member of the committee of the Pro-Life Technology Symposium. He has served as treasurer of the Ohio Right to Life Political Action Committee, and was the first webmaster for the Ohio Right to Life web site. To pay the bills he works as a software engineer consulting to the Air Force.

Jay has published articles in a variety of computer magazines, including Dr Dobbs Journal and Microcomputing. He has contributed chapters to two college textbooks from Greenhaven Press, one on criminology and the other on Malthusian economics. Other publications include an article on homosexuality for World and on genetics for Creation.

He lives in Fairborn, Ohio with his daughter Arianna.

Jim Meyer and Mary Pyper

Radio Maria

Radio Station Techniques

maria.pdf

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Donna Murphy

ENDOSCOPY in the Womb

murphy.pdf

Donna Murphy has worked in a hospital setting for ten years and home healthcare for five. In 1993, Donna began the Respect Life Group at the College of Mt. St. Joseph, and began speaking in schools in 1994. She has served as a volunteer at Pregnancy Center West for over a decade, and is a member of this center's outreach team.

Donna helped develop the In Control chastity program for Pregnancy Center West and continues to be a speaker for this program today with her topics, "Baby Development" and "The Only Real Choice is an Educated Choice." She also speaks similarly for Pregnancy Center East, which has adopted the same chastity program. Donna has spoken for Nurses for Community Education and is a member of Feminists for Life and many other pro-life organizations. She is trained in debate and her desire is to positively encourage pro-life attitudes regarding politics, healthcare, and general life issues.

Jeff Koloze, PhD

University of Phoenix

Newman's The Idea of a University and Engineering Programs in Today’s Universities

koloze2.pdf

Dr. Jeff Koloze is Campus College Chair for the College of Arts and Sciences at the Columbus, Ohio Campus of the University of Phoenix. He has taught communications, undergraduate and graduate English, and humanities courses since 1989 at several colleges and universities in the Cleveland, Columbus, and Springfield, Ohio metropolitan areas. Dr. Koloze's primary research interest is the presentation of the right to life issues of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia in American fiction; most of his forty-five works (book chapter and papers) on these matters have been published in conference proceedings and on the web. Dr. Koloze is the author of An Ethical Analysis of the Portrayal of Abortion in American Fiction: Dreiser, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos, Brautigan, and Irving

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