The European Society For Philosophy Of Medicine And Healthcare

Nijmegen, 7 May 2004

Dear member of the ESPMH,

It is a pleasure to inform you about the forthcoming 18th annual conference of the ESPMH in Reykjavik, Iceland. Enclosed you will find the penultimate draft version of the program. This draft program lists all speakers who have submitted an abstract. Names of those who have already registered have been marked in bold. Persons who have not registered by 15 June will have their names removed from the final program that will be distributed in Reykjavik (please find enclosed a registration form). With this we hope to avoid major gaps in the actual conference sessions.

On behalf of the Executive Committee, I would also like to invite you to attend the General Assembly of our Society, which will take place on Friday August 27 (16.15-17.45 hrs) in Reykjavik. The draft agenda of the meeting has been enclosed, as well as the draft report of the General Assembly held in Vilnius, 22 August 2003.

In an earlier letter we invited you to nominate candidates for the position of President-Elect and three further positions of regular member of the Executive Committee. Election of these positions will take place during the General Assembly of the ESPMH on Friday August 27, 2004 in Reykjavik. Subsequent to the invitation, we have received 2 nominations for the position of President-Elect and 4 nominations for the three positions of regular member of the Executive Committee. The EC has discussed the nominations and decided to include all nominees in its proposal to the General Assembly.

The election proposal for the position of President-Elect therefore is (in alphabetic order):

Seren Holm (Cardiff; nominated by Matti Häyry and Tuija Takala) Pierre Mallia (Malta, nominated by Lennart Nordenfelt and Ingemar Nordin)

The election proposal for the three positions of member in the EC is (in alphabetic order):

Vilhjalmur Amason (Iceland, nominated by Lennart Nordenfelt and Ingemar Nordin)
Friedrich Heubel (Germany, nominated by Nikola Biller-Andomo and Alfred Simon)
Tuija Takala (Finland, nominated by Matti Hayry and Soren Holm)
Zbig Szawarski (Poland, already member of the EC and candidate for a next term)

For the three positions of new member in the EC all contestants will compete for all positions. Thus there are three ballots, one for each position in the EC.

Regular member 1: Takala, Heubel, Szawarski and Arnason
Regular member 2: Takala, Heubel, Szawarski and Amason
Regular member 3: Takala, Heubel, Szawarski and Amason

If the winner of the election for member 1 also has received the most votes in the election for the post of member 2, position 2 will then go to the candidate with the second most votes. If one of the winners (or both winners) of the elections for the first two positions has the most votes for position 3, this position will go to the person with the second (or third most) votes. These proposals will be introduced for voting during the General Assembly in Reykjavik. Members attending the GA can vote in person. Members who are unable to attend the meeting but want to vote, should approach the ESPMH Secretariat (by e-mail, telephone, fax or normal mail) to request postal ballots. These ballots should be returned to the secretariat before 1 August or handed in (via an attending colleague) to the Secretary at the Reykjavik conference before the meeting of the General Assembly has been opened.

In order to facilitate the voting process, short biographies of the candidates have been enclosed in this mailing. Each candidate has been invited to provide this information. Finally, please find also enclosed a letter from Kluwer Academic Publisher about our journal "Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. A European Journal."

On behalf of the Executive Committee,

Dr. Bert Gordijn Secretary of ESPMH