If you are interested in Medical ethics and choose to attend SLU, you might check to see if Ronald Munson is teaching any courses across town at the U of Missouri-St. Louis. He is a professor emeritus. So, I'm not sure if he is teaching courses anymore, but he is, I think, a leading contributor to the medical ethics literature. And even if he is no longer teaching, he might be willing to provide you with some assitance.
I contacted the Iowa department last week. At that point they had only extended offers to those applicants to whom they were offering fellowships. The director of graduate studies said they hadn't yet determined how many students they could accept this year with TA funding (and they don't admit people without funding). They were planning to figure that out yesterday at a department meeting. So, I think you should expect to hear from them today (but certainly within the next day or two) if you've been admitted. If you are on the waitlist, I wouldn't be surprised if it took a bit longer for them to contact you.