Centro de Investigaciones en Bioethica (CIB), University of Guanajuato
After more than two decades of collaborative work with colleagues in genetics, science education, medical ethics and law at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico sharing the dream of eventually founding a center for bioethical research in Mexico, became a reality in 1993 under the direction of Gabriel Cores-Gallo.
Working out of a few rooms in the basement of a building on the university’s medical school campus in Leon, Dr. Jorge Hernández-Arriaga was selected by the university in 1997 as the second director of the Centro de Investigaciones en Bioethica (CIB), the first of its kind at the University of Guanajuato and one of the very few in Mexico, in general.
In the intervening years, Dr. Arriago and a small group of founding members worked to expand the center’s three-fold mission of research, education and outreach by establishing collaborative partnerships with students and faculty at universities in the neighboring states of San Luis Potosi, Aguascalientes, and Queretaro. In the process, CIB has established itself as a respected program in the university’s academic infrastructure — as well as throughout Latin America.
Under the direction of the Center’s third director appointed in 2005, Victoria E. Navarrete Cruz, and Associate Director-Secretary, Fernando Anaya-Velazquez, CIB is looking to be the catalyst for eventually connecting the university’s Health Sciences with the Humanities and to establish bioethics committees in three of the main hospitals in Celaya, Irapuato and Guanajuato following the establishment of the State Commission on Bioethics.
Both Victoria and Fernando have agreed to become members of Geneforum’s Advisory Board and, in that capacity become active Geneforum bloggers (in Spanish and English) on bioethics topics and policies shared by, and different from, those in the US and Mexico. In the process, it is hoped that Geneforum will become an important bioethics and health-related educational resource for Latinos living and working in the US.
Both Victoria and Fernando have the capacity to make significant contributions to these fields, as well as to graduate students enrolled in the Oregon Masters of Public Health Program at Portland State and Oregon Health and Sciences universities, notably in the area of public health genomics.