Fall 2007 Season
12 September
History of the Health Sciences Lecture
BEING THERE:
MEDICAL STUDENT SERVICE
AFTER 9/11
Barry Goldstein, M.D., Ph.D., Biochemistry
and Medical Humanities, University of Rochester
For months following 11 September 2001, 20 new medical students at NYU worked as volunteers in the office of the city's chief medical examiner to sort, catalogue and identify human remains. Interested in these students' experiences, scientist-artist Barry Goldstein photographed and interviewed them. His exhibit, Being There, explores the complex impulses that prompted students to volunteer and the challenges and consequences of their service.
Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series and the Social Issues in Medicine course, School of Medicine
-Dr. Goldstein's photographic exhibit, Being There, is on view in the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library 10-14 September 2007-
19 September
History of the Health Sciences Lecture
DISPLAYING
DEAD AND DIFFERENT BODIES:
SPECTACLE /
SIDESHOW /
EDUCATION?
Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D., Psychiatry, Medical Ethics Sociology and Center for Bioethics
University of Pennsylvania
Melanie McCollum, Ph.D.
Anatomy and Cell Biology, UVA
It's rare today in the developed world for the average person to encounter a cadaver, see human viscera, or confront bodies that bear significant disfigurement. Society has segregated these specimens of bodily presentation, allowing only physicians, other clinicians (such as nurses), morticians, and police and military personnel to transgress these secret places of human embodiment. Now, there's controversy about touring exhibits of plastinated, dissected human cadavers and medical museums drawing crowds curious to see these forbidden forms. What's our fascination when we behold the body so exhibited? Who should have access to dead or irregular bodies? What are the ethics of human display?
Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series
26 September
WHAT'S THE GOOD
IN "GOOD MEDICINE"?
THE PLACE OF BIOETHICS
AND THE HUMANITIES
IN MEDICINE
Daniel M. Becker, M.D., M.P.H., M.F.A.
Biomedical Ethics and Humanities, UVA
Margaret E. Mohrmann, M.D., Ph.D.
Biomedical Ethics and Humanities, UVA
For nearly 40 years, biomedical ethics and medical humanities have been part of medical education and medical practice in the U.S. and Europe. Often seen as upholding what's "good" or most virtuous in medicine, at UVA they have had influence since the late 1960s and had a formal place in curricula, training and practice since the late 1980s. How are these disciplines understood now, in light of current challenges to practice and professionalism-and in view of the recent Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities merger? How do they contribute to what we understand to be "good medicine"?
Co-presented with the Gold Humanism Honor Society, UVA Chapter
3 October
History of the Health Sciences Lecture
ROOT SHOCK:
THE IMPACT OF URBAN RENEWAL
ON HEALTH
Mindy Thompson Fullilove, M.D., Psychiatry
Columbia University
M. Norman Oliver, M.D., M.A., Family Medicine
and Center on Health Disparities, UVA
Maurice Cox, B.Arch., Architecture, UVA
and Charlottesville City Council
U.S. urban renewal projects in the 1950s-1970s bulldozed entire districts and traumatically displaced hundreds of African American communities, whose residents experienced "root shock" with their physical and emotional ecosystems' destruction. With this perspective on urban renewal, including projects like Charlottesville's Vinegar Hill, how might we understand better and approach differently the health status of urban African Americans and the health of our cities and neighborhoods?
Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Center on Health Disparities,
Student National Medical Association-UVA Chapter, and the UVA Symposium on Race and Society
10 October
THE WOUNDED BREAST:
A PATIENT'S
CANCER JOURNEY
Evelyne Accad, Ph.D., French, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
Lebanese-American scholar Evelyne Accad writes eloquently of her personal experience with breast cancer and also looks at breast cancer through anthropological, political and cultural lenses to offer a sense of how this disease affects women of and in the Middle East. How are health and health care around breast cancer bound up with politics, religion, the culture of science, artistic expression, and the social status of women in the Middle East-and even in the U.S.?
Co-presented with the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, the Breast Care Center,
the Women's Center, Studies in Women and Gender, and the Department of History, UVA
17 October
CULTURAL COMPETENCE
IN CLINICAL CARE
Farhat Moazam, M.D., Ph.D., Centre of Biomedical Ethics & Culture, SIND Institute of Urology and Transplantation, Karachi, Pakistan
Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities, UVA
Pediatric surgeon and bioethicist Farhat Moazam is at home in two worlds-Pakistan, where she was born, studied medicine, and enjoyed much of her career; and the U.S., where she trained and practiced as a surgeon, then took degrees in bioethics. What qualities and skills do bioethicists and clinicians require to practice effectively at home-wherever home is-and to traverse cultural divides with patients, peers, and policymakers?
Co-presented with the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life, UVA
24 October
BABIES BY DESIGN:
ETHICS
AND GENETIC ENHANCEMENT
Ronald M. Green, Ph.D., Ethics Institute, Dartmouth College
and Community and Family Medicine
Dartmouth Medical School
Advances in genetics and reproductive technologies, as well as changing social mores around "enhancement medicine," make it increasingly possible for couples or individuals to design their offspring by selecting for (or against) certain genetically influenced traits or tendencies.
What are the ethics of genetic enhancement for prospective parents, to be sure, but also
for their larger communities and for the health professionals providing necessary services?
Co-presented with the Institute for Practical Ethics
and Public Life, UVA
31 October
Keynote Address of the Annual Medical Student
Research Symposium
MEDICINE IN THE GENOMICS ERA
Stephen S. Rich, Ph.D., Public Health Sciences, UVA
This keynote address for the UVA School of Medicine's annual Medical Student Research Symposium highlights medical research at the frontiers of science through examination of genomics researcher Stephen Rich's work on Type One diabetes. Dr. Rich's talk also offers glimpses of a life in science and the scientist's commitment to the health of the public.
Co-presented with the Office for Research
7 November
Bice Memorial Lecture of the School of Nursing
DO TRAINED NURSES ...
WORK FOR LOVE,
OR DO THEY WORK FOR MONEY?
Ellen D. Baer, RN, Ph.D., FAAN, Nursing
University of Pennsylvania
and Florida Atlantic University
In marked contrast to medicine, nursing is a field in which philanthropic and altruistic ideals conflict sharply with professional self-determination. The conflict is most evident in the economics of being a nurse. While philanthropists and altruistic agents seldom seek economic gain or even parity for their efforts, professionals- who have devoted years to developing a particular expertise-expect to be paid well for their work and to be recognized in other ways as well. What is the historical basis for nursing's dilemma around dollars? Can the profession rethink its ambivalence toward money?
Co-presented with the School of Nursing
14 November
History of the Health Sciences Lecture
WHAT IS "DEAD" ANYWAY?
DETERMINING DEATH
FOR ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION
Susan E. Lederer, Ph.D., History of Medicine and Science Yale University
Timothy L. Pruett, M.D., Surgery and Internal Medicine, UVA
President, United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)
When organ and tissue transplantation is a possibility, how do physicians determine that a prospective donor has died so that organs may be procured? Determination of death by neurologic criteria ("brain death") is legal in the U.S. and many (though not all) other countries, and it's medically preferable, since optimal organ perfusion can be maintained until procurement. But by all appearances a brain-dead donor on life support doesn't seem "dead." Understanding the history as well as the science of determining death can help clinicians, families, and even prospective donors manage this challenging emotional and psychological aspect of transplantation medicine.
Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series