Event Date: 25 – 26 September 2015
Barts Pathology Museum
Robin Brook Centre
West Smithfield
London EC1A 7BE
“DYING WELL”: ENACTING MEDICAL ETHICS
A cross-disciplinary Symposium at Barts Pathology Museum
Friday, 25 September 2015 (not recorded)
Registration
Introduction: Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi
Dr Judith Beniston (German Department, UCL), Dr Annja Neumann (German, University of Cambridge), Nicole Robertson (German Department, UCL)
Theatre production of Professor Bernhardi by [Foreign Affairs]
This symposium adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to ongoing debates on end-of-life care. Medical professionals, lawyers, ethicists, policy makers, humanities scholars, cultural practitioners and patient representatives will come together to consider what it might mean in today’s world to ‘die well’.
The springboard for this event is Arthur Schnitzler’s medical drama Professor Bernhardi (1912), which will be performed in a new adaptation at Barts Pathology Museum on 23-25 September. The play focuses on a Jewish doctor who prevents a Catholic priest from giving the last rites to a patient who is unaware that she is dying, and takes a wry look at some of the ways in which death is embroiled in wider social structures: cultural, political and religious.
The symposium takes up key questions posed by Schnitzler’s unlikely comedy and explores them from a contemporary perspective, in four panels addressing socio-cultural responses to the challenges of biomedicine; bodily practices and embodied knowledge; faith, conscience and the role of doctors; and current institutional perspectives on end-of-life care.
Saturday, 26 September 2015
Programme
Welcome and Introduction By Dr Annja Neumann (Cambridge):
Panel 1: Socio-Cultural Responses to the Ethical Challenges of Biomedicine
Dr Julia Boll (Department of Literature, University of Konstanz) – The Object’s Voice: Literature’s Attempt to Create Subjectivity:
AUDIO HERE
Susan Watts (Head of Public Engagement and Communications, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre) – What can “Living Well” teach us about “Dying Well”?:
AUDIO HERE
Respondents: Members of the [Foreign Affairs] theatre company (Trine Garrett, Fiona Watson and Will Timbers) and audience questions:
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Panel 2: Bodily Practices and Embodied Knowledge
Dr Samir Guglani (Consultant Oncologist and Director of Medicine Unboxed) – Human Voices:
AUDIO HERE
Prof Tom Corby (Professor of Visual and Interdisciplinary Art, University of Westminster) – Blood and Bones
AUDIO HERE
Respondent: Dr Fiona MacCormick and audience questions:
Prof Andrew Webber, Fiona MacCormick, Samir Guglani and Tom Corby discussing embodied knowledge” (from left to right)
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Panel 3: Institutions
Baroness Ilora Finlay (Professor of Palliative Medicine and member of the House of Lords) – The Role of Legislation in End-of-Life Care
AUDIO HERE
Dr Fiona MacCormick (Doctor in Palliative Medicine and Postgraduate Student, Newcastle University) – Ethics and End-of-Life Care: An Ethnography of End-of-Life Care on Hospital Wards
NB: This paper was not recorded
Respondent: Susan Watts and audience questions
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Panel 4: Faith, Conscience and the Role of Doctors
Dr Mary Neal (School of Law, University of Strathclyde) – The Importance of Protection for Conscience in the Healthcare Environment
AUDIO HERE
Respondents: Dr James Wilson (Department of Philosophy, UCL), Dr Piers Benn (Heythrop College, University of London) and audience questions:
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Prof Jonathan Montgomery (Faculty of Laws, UCL) – Conscientious Objection, Professional Ethics and the Public Sphere
Respondents: Dr James Wilson (Department of Philosophy, UCL), Dr Piers Benn (Heythrop College, University of London) and audience questions:
Download full conference programme:
