Institute For Advanced Study Lecturer To Discuss "American Medicine Meets The American Dream"

Philosopher and physician Carl Elliott will speak on “American Medicine Meets the American Dream” on February 25 at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Elliott, who is Visiting Associate Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute, is associate professor of philosophy and pediatrics at the University of Minnesota. He is also director of graduate studies at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics.

“In recent years,” says Elliott, “American doctors have begun to use the tools of medical technology not merely to make sick people healthy, but to make well people better than well. From Botox, Viagra, and Propecia to psychoactive drugs and sex-reassignment surgery, many Americans now deploy medical technology to transform themselves, ward off social stigma, and achieve self-fulfillment.” Elliott’s talk, he says, will ask, “Is there anything morally worrying about this social shift? Why do we feel uneasy about such medical interventions, even as we embrace them?”

Elliott graduated from Davidson College and then earned an M.D. degree at the Medical University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Natal in South Africa, the University of Otago in New Zealand, and the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, as well as a faculty appointment at McGill University in Montreal. Among organizations supporting his work have been the National Human Genome Research Institute, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Elliott is author of The Rules of Insanity: Moral Responsibility and Mental Illness (1996); A Philosophical Disease: Bioethics, Culture and Identity (1999); and Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (2003). A frequent contributor to medical, psychiatric, and bioethics journals, he has also reached a popular audience through such publications as The American Prospect, London Review of Books, and The Atlantic Monthly.

Elliott’s talk is free and open to the public. For further information, call 609-734-8203.