Talking Biopolitics with Donna Dickenson interviewed by Osagie Obasogie

July 16, 2013
[Video]
 


Please join Donna Dickenson and the Center for Genetics and Society for Talking Biopolitics 2013. In this live web-based interview and conversation, Donna will talk with CGS's Osagie Obasogie – and with you – about her experiences in writing and promoting Me Medicine vs. We Medicine: Reclaiming Biotechnology for the Common Good, and about her thoughts on the new biopolitics.

About the Book

Are you trying to make sense of the grand claims for personalized medicine being bandied about? Let Donna Dickenson be your guide.

In Me Medicine vs. We Medicine, Donna turns her keen scientific and political intelligence to biotech visions of individually tailored drugs, consumer gene tests, enhancement technologies and more. She finds tidbits of real hope for improving health care – along with scads of hype, some of it dangerous. Her must-read book makes a powerful case for taming "me-centeredness" and market domination of medicine, and for renewing our commitments to public health and the common good.

About the Author

Donna Dickenson (BA, MSc, PhD) is Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of London, Research Associate at the University of Oxford, and Visiting Fellow at the University of Bristol, UK. Born and educated in New England, she began her career as a journalist in New York, worked on a criminal court reform project in that city, and then became an associate in research at Yale University.

Over a forty-year career in academia, she has published more than twenty books and sixty refereed articles in the field of medical ethics and medical law. She has served on many professional bodies’ ethics committees and has given expert evidence to the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. In 2006 she became the first woman to win the International Spinoza Lens Award for contribution to public debate on ethics; the first winner was Edward Said. Her previous book, Body Shopping: Converting Body Parts to Profit (2009), was widely praised, with Philip Pullman commenting: “Alarming and illuminating. No one with any interest at all in medicine and society and how they interact should miss this.”