The 22nd annual Medical Ethics Symposium—Designer Bodies: The Cutting Edge—took place Thursday, December 13 in the Murray Kahn Theater.
The seminar, organized by biology teacher Roz Bierig and her medical ethics class, consisted of five speakers who discussed the topic of plastic surgery.
The Keynote speaker was Dr. David Staffenberg, the Chief of Plastic Surgery at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. In his speech, Staffenberg differentiated between reconstructive and superfluous surgery. Staffenberg also showed a slide show presentation with various photos of the work he had done.
Rabbi Michael Paley made a speech titled “Beauty and the Bible.” Dr. Berryl Fox, a clinical psychologist, analyzed the different types of clients who undergo plastic surgery. David N. Hoffman, the General Counsel and Vice President of Ethics and Compliance at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, posed the question of who should be allowed to get plastic surgery.
The final speaker was senior Sylvia Ko, who takes medical ethics. She discussed her own experience with plastic surgery. Ko was born with a deformity of the ear, and underwent plastic surgery at the age of ten.
“All the speakers see the topic differently and justify their opinions in different ways,” freshman Anina Ahmad said.
The speeches were broken up by short skits put on by the students from the medical ethics class. Their skits poked fun at the common views of plastic surgery, and provided some humor between speakers.
The event also had a raffle and snacks for the students who attended.
One of the reasons students attended the symposium was for the extra credit offered. “It seemed like an interesting topic, and my teacher offer five points extra credit on our next test,” junior Elizabeth Kelman said.
“Some students go for extra credit, some don’t,” Assistant Principal Elizabeth Fong said. “But it is good. It exposes students to the topic and teaches them something new.”
Bierig held the first Medical Ethics Symposium at Stuyvesant in 1986. “Before I came to Stuyvesant, I took my students to a Jewish Medical Ethics symposium,” she said. “When I came to Stuyvesant, I thought, ‘Why not do our own?’ […] It develops good skills and it allows the student body to become familiar with going to activities like symposiums.”
Fong said the event was a success. “It was well organized and attended,” she said.
