Fall 2003 Brown Bag Series
Tuesday, September 30, 2003 — Beth Kangas,
Ph.D.
Lying, Deceiving, and Truth-Telling in Medical, Social, and Cultural Settings
This work in progress examines the topic of lying cross-culturally,
particularly as it relates to clinical settings. I use as a case study the
preference of doctors and family members in Yemen (in the Arabian Peninsula)
to conceal the diagnoses and prognoses from terminally ill patients. Patients, it is believed, should be protected from the psychological
harm of learning bad news, especially when miraculous recoveries might still
occur. Participants at this session
will gain an understanding of a cultural context where full disclosure is
seen as providing inhumane care. In
addition, participants will explore culturally influenced notions of when
and why telling the truth is appropriate (or not).
Beth Kangas, Ph.D., is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology. Her medical anthropology research focuses on ethical, economic, and emotional issues related to advanced medical technology, both in the Middle East and globally. In her ethnographic fieldwork, Dr. Kangas surveyed doctors and Islamic religious scholars in Yemen, and interviewed Yemeni patients and family members pursuing out-of-country advanced medical care in Jordan and India.
Tuesday, October 14, 2003 — Alexandra Minna
Stern, Ph.D.
The Politics of Apology: Sterilization Survivors in an Age of Reparations
This talk explored the recent series of gubernatorial apologies for forced
sterilizations in states including California, Virginia, North Carolina, and
Oregon. What do these apologies mean, for those sterilized and as acts of
official remorse? Why now? What are the philosophical and historical ramifications
of recognizing past medical abuses and professing they will not be repeated?
The audience can expect to: 1) learn about the history of forced sterilization
in the United States during the entirety of the twentieth century; 2) learn
about why California led the country in forced sterilizations (20,000 out
of 60,000) total; 3) think about the historical and ethical significance of
official apologies to sterilization survivors and state populations at large
in an age of reparations.
Alexandra Minna Stern, Ph.D., is Associate
Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan
and Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and
the Program in American
Tuesday, November 18, 2003 — Karen Ritchie,
M.D
Medicine as War: Consequences and Alternatives
The central metaphor of medicine, war on death and disease, has advantages
and disadvantages. A society that
honors and even worships warriors admires the heroic physician battling the
enemy. But the war has a cost – a
dollar cost to all of us, and a personal cost to patients and those who work
in health care. We continue to create
more sophisticated and more expensive machines and procedures in the apparent
belief that we can win a war on death. Warriors
must be strong, so we do not tolerate weakness in doctors, or even in sick
people. The war model works well for
infectious disease, an invasion of the body by a foreign enemy, but chronic
illness requires another metaphor. Participants
will understand the influence of the warrior metaphor in health care; review
its effect on the health care industry, patients, and health care personnel;
and consider alternatives to fighting against death and disease.
Karen Ritchie, M.D., is a psychiatrist and bioethicist. She graduated from Ohio State University School of Medicine and obtained a masters’ degree in bioethics from Georgetown University. She was founder and first president of the Midwest Bioethics Center in Kansas City, and was formerly Chief of Psychiatry at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Her book Angels and Bolters: Women’s Cancer Scripts, depicts real women with cancer, for whom fighting is only one part of the journey.
Tuesday, December 9, 2003 — DeClan
O’Reilly
The German Chemical Octopus Crippled by Burroughs Wellcome:
The British Pharmacy Industry and the First World War
Burroughs Wellcome & Company was the
largest and most important pharmacy business in Britain before World War One.
Founded by two dynamic Americans, Silas Burroughs and Henry Wellcome in 1879,
BW pioneered the use of ethical medicines in Britain and her empire at the
end of the 19th century. Henry Wellcome was also responsible for founding
the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories (WPRL), one of the first
private medical research institutions in the UK. However, it was clear that
Britain was technologically inferior to German medical research before 1914,
particularly in the new field of pharmaceuticals. When war came the UK moved
swiftly to remedy this situation, by seizing enemy patents and making them
available to British industry, the UK hoped to foster a strong indigenous
chemical and pharmaceutical industry. Working in conjunction with the Medical
Research Council, the drug industry accepted the challenge and produced many
of the drugs, which had been imported from Germany before the war. The audience
will see that despite this and other success, including manufacture of insulin
in the 1920s, the long-term benefits to BW and British industry were
less clear. My contention is that it was not until the 1940s with
the invention of Penicillin and Dioxin that BW emerged as a true modern Pharmaceutical
company.
Dr. O'Reilly was educated at the Universities of
London and Cambridge and has taught at Queen Mary College, London, and at
Middlesex University as well as the 2003 London Study Abroad Program in History
& Ethics of Health Care. He was Senior Research Associate and Fellow of
the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College
London working on the new history of Burroughs Wellcome Company (1880-1940)
and is now the Charles C. Price Fellow at the Beckman Centre for Chemical
History in Philadelphia. His interests range from technology transfer between
Germany and Britain to the history of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry.
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and Policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint sponsorship of Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine and the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. The Michigan State University College of Human Medicine is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, designates this educational activity for a maximum of 1 hour in category 1 credit per session towards the AMA Physician's Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those hours of credit that he/she actually spent in the activity.
