Harvard Medical School

Several different accounts can be made of the question: What is medicine for?

Some might say it is to "provide healthcare services," or the provision of interventions that patients request so long as the interventions are legal, feasible, and consistent with well-being as the patient perceives it.

On the other hand, one might argue for the "way of medicine," or the pursuit of a patient's health, objectively construed, which might entail occasional refusals of requests for interventions that contradict this goal.

But should physicians/medical practitioners be allowed to refuse to perform some practices they deem in contradiction to the patient's health, even in opposition to a patient's request? What about patient autonomy? What is health? Does it have any objective, universal basis?

The Thomistic Institute, CMDA (the Christian Medical and Dental Association), and CSO (Catholic Students Organization) invite you to a talk by Prof. Farr Curlin, MD of Duke University, who will give a talk providing a framework for thinking about what medicine is for. There will be a lot of time for questions, so come ready to ask anything on your mind.

TMEC 250 (260 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115)

Food: Something delicious!

Tuesday, February 4

12:30 PM

This lecture is free and open to the public.

About the speaker: Farr Curlin is Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities and CoDirector of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative (TMC) at Duke University. Dr. Curlin’s ethics scholarship takes up moral questions that are raised by religion-associated differences in physicians’ practices. He is an active palliative medicine physician and holds appointments in both the School of Medicine and the Divinity School, where he is working with colleagues to develop a new interdisciplinary community of scholarship and training focused on the intersection of theology, medicine, and culture.