Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

With

Noelle Sullivan, PhD
Associate Professor of Instruction
Program in Global Health Studies
Northwestern University

Creating Moral Commodities: 
Marketing in the For-Profit Global Health Volunteering Industry

Global health travel interest has spiked over the last two decades. In response to the demand by students in particular, hundreds of international “voluntourism” companies have emerged. These companies offer placements in health facilities in the so-called Global South where students can intern, complete an elective, or volunteer. As public debates about the ethics of “voluntourism” have become common, companies have responded by advertising themselves as providing ethical, safe, and worthwhile placements where students can help “make a difference” in under-resourced health facilities. Yet in spite of companies’ advertising pivot emphasizing the impact and ethical nature of their projects, the industry nonetheless creates an enabling environment for unethical engagements and practices that undermine the safety and quality of health care. This talk emerges from Sullivan’s book manuscript in progress, The Business of Good Intentions: Reframing the Global Health Volunteering Debate, based on ethnographic and online research undertaken from 2008-2017.

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Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

Speaker/topic to be announced

The Montgomery Lectures series addresses diverse topics within bioethics and the medical humanities. Presenters are faculty, affiliates, and alumni of the Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program--along with a few special guests. The lectures run every Thursday from noon to 12:45pm during The Graduate School's fall, winter, and spring quarters. They are open to students, faculty, and the general public. Formerly called "Special Topics in MH&B", this series was renamed in 2013 for Emeritus Professor Kathryn Montgomery.

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

With

M. Jeanne Wirpsa, MA BCC HEC-C
Clinical Ethicist and Program Manager, Medical Ethics
Research Chaplain, Spiritual Care and Education
Northwestern Memorial Hospital

Faculty, MacLean Center for Clinical Ethics
Religion, Bioethics and Medicine
University of Chicago

Religious Exceptionalism in Healthcare: Is it Defensible?

Patients, clinicians, and healthcare institutions appeal to moral claims embedded in religious traditions to request or refuse medical interventions. Accommodation for religion is granted a privileged status by the religious liberty clause of the First Amendment. The creation of the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division under the US Department of Health and Human Services and high-profile court cases asserting the right to gather to worship during the COVID pandemic, among other recent political events, suggests growing support for religious exceptionalism in healthcare.  When clinical ethicists confront real-life cases involving religious claims -- from family refusal to accept death by neurological criteria, patient requests for products free of porcine or bovine components, pleas to "do everything" to give God time to work a miracle for a dying loved one, or clinician recusal from caring for a patient post gender transformation surgery -- the stakes of religious exceptionalism are high. As bioethicist Dan Sulmasy argues, these cases call for the exercise of epistemic moral humility in medicine, even as limits on accommodations may need to be set if they present an undue burden or threaten the common good.

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

With

Susan Duyar, MD, MA
Resident Physician, Department of OB/GYN
Northwestern University McGaw Medical Center

Misestimating Frozen Eggs

Over the last decade oocyte vitrification, or egg freezing, has developed as a way of fertility preservation for women who are unable or unwilling to create and freeze embryos. While this technology was largely driven by the need for better ways to preserve fertility in young cancer patients, a large and thriving market for egg freezing has arisen in women who wish to delay childbearing for non-medical purposes, or “planned oocyte cryopreservation”. However, its rising popularity in this population has raised a host of problems, particularly in the way that it has been advertised to women.  In this talk we will briefly review oocyte cryopreservation, including its risks, benefits, and costs. We will discuss the historical development of planned oocyte cryopreservation and highlight some of the inherent flaws in how it has come be. Finally, we will delve into some of the coercive advertising frameworks that are used to promote planned oocyte cryopreservation and which shapes both the public discourse on the technology and private decision making by women who may consider using this technology.

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

With

Speaker/Topic to be announced

The Montgomery Lectures series addresses diverse topics within bioethics and the medical humanities. Presenters are faculty, affiliates, and alumni of the Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program--along with a few special guests. The lectures run every Thursday from noon to 12:45pm during The Graduate School's fall, winter, and spring quarters. They are open to students, faculty, and the general public. Formerly called "Special Topics in MH&B", this series was renamed in 2013 for Emeritus Professor Kathryn Montgomery.