| These lectures address diverse topics within bioethics and the medical humanities. Speakers are MH&B faculty or special guests we've invited to present. The lectures run every Thursday from noon to 12:45pm in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie building, during The Graduate School's fall, winter, and spring quarters. Due to public interest, we've made these lectures open to all, inside and outside the Northwestern community. Please feel free to bring a lunch. |
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.Thursday, February 7 Midwives, OB/Gyn's, feminists, and grandmothers-to-be frequently argue about what birth should look like. This lecture will look at the history and philosophy of these arguments to consider the questions—what constitutes a natural act, a normal act, a healthy act, a liberating or oppressive act? And what is the role of the physician in this sort of conundrum?
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Thursday, February 14
Every day in the media, you see people struggling with this question. Is sex for continuation of the family, the nation, the species? For individual pleasure? For deciding who counts as a good president or senator? All this might matters to politics and not to medicine... if doctors were not frequently asked to decide things like who should have their genitals changed, who should be locked up or treated as a pervert, and who should get to marry whom. What's a nice doc to do?
.Thursday, February 21 This lecture wraps up this series by confronting head-on the question of what medical doctors are for—that is, what doctors can, should, and are able to do in the world (or at least the U.S.) today. Is "cosmetic medicine" an oxymoron? Should doctors really be seen as providers to consumers? And when might it be time for doctors to defend society against patients? | | |
