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Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program

Alice Domurat Dreger, PhD
Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities & Bioethics
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Interests

History and Philosophy of Medicine and Anatomy
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Biography

Alice Dreger is Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities & Bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University. She works on social justice issues in medicine, using the medical humanities (particularly history) to seek to improve the biomedical and social treatment of people born with socially-challenging anatomies, including those born with disorders of sexual development (sometimes called "intersex"), cranio-facial anomalies, conjoinment, and dwarfism. Dr. Dreger frequently speaks to and writes for medical and non-medical audiences, functions as an expert to the media and to policy makers, and advises fellow activists on how to do ethical, effective advocacy.

Dr. Dreger's first two books, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex (now in its sixth printing with Harvard University Press, 1998) and the edited anthology Intersex in the Age of Ethics (University Publishing Group, 1999), both focused on the biomedical treatment of people born with atypical sex anatomies. Her latest book, One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal (Harvard University Press, 2004), has received positive reviews in the New Yorker, the New England Journal of Medicine, the London Review of Books, and Nature. It was named book of the month by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and received an honorary mention for the 2005 Gustavus Myers Book Award of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights.

Dr. Dreger served as the project coordinator and editor-in-chief for the handbooks of the Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development. Her essays on science, medicine, and life have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post.

In April 2008, Dr. Dreger was selected for a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for her work on science and identity politics in the Internet age. She is currently working on a book on this topic.

More about Dr. Dreger's work is available on her personal website: alicedreger.com.
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Contact Info

312-503-7962
a-dreger@northwestern.edu
750 North Lake Shore Drive, Room 624

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Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood: Inconclusive Advice to Parents

Hastings Center Report

January 2009

The Controversy Surrounding The Man
Who Would Be Queen: A Case History
of the Politics of Science, Identity,
and Sex in the Internet Age

And the response to the 23
commentaries

June 2008
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Appeared as guest expert on "Growing Up Intersex" episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show (re-airing July 25, 2008)

September 2007

Audio editorial on NPR about sex researcher John Money

July 2006
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Interviewed for "Doubles and Dopplegangers" episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge

October 2005

This page last updated on...January 21, 2009 10:53 AM.