122. Elderhood: redefining aging, transforming medicine, reimagining life (1:02:58)

Date:
2021-03-03
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
Among the COVID-19 pandemic's lessons is an increased awareness of the hazards of old age. But only a fraction of that risk is biological. At a moment in history when most of us will live into old age, we've created a world that's almost entirely focused on childhood and adulthood. It's time now to define, design, and empower this new, nearly universal elderhood. In this Medical Center Hour, geriatrician and writer Louise Aronson draws on her clinical experience and creative abilities to reimagine and advocate for old age not as a disease but as a vital phase of being human, with implications for social and community life, technology, geroscience, and healthcare. How shall we now approach elderhood? Koppaka Family Foundation Lecture in Health Humanities

125. Empathy, an inquiry (1:00:53)

Date:
2014-10-08
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
In this Medical center hour, prize-winning writer Leslie Jamison inquires into the phenomenon of empathy. It may be something more fraught then we often imagine it to be. Empathy isn't just an instinctive reaction but a more complicated blend of intuition and decision. And it's not neccessarily an unequivocal good. It can mislead. It can exhaust. Ms. Jamison draws on her experiences as a standardized patient, working with and observing student doctors getting "trained" in the practice of empathy, as well as her experiences as a journalist, inhabiting a vexed state of empathy for her subjects, to consider a variety of perspectives on what makes for good empathy and what good it can do. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture

126. Eros and illness: a caregiver's tale (1:03:25)

Date:
2017-03-15
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
The caregiver—whether a family member pressed into service or an underpaid home-care aide—is a representative figure of our time. This status is paradoxical because actual caregivers (so often female) do their work largely out of sight and almost in secret. It is an uncanny representative figure whom we do not see. Writer and scholar David Morris spent over a decade as caregiver for his late wife, Ruth, a medical librarian who in her mid-fifties began to show signs of dementia, most likely earlier-onset Alzheimer’s disease. In this Medical Center, Morris describes his experience but also uses his personal caregiving as a fulcrum for opening up larger questions about what biomedicine often overlooks in its molecular vision of illness. Desire is the neglected force that Morris sees as basic to illness, and it is the role of desire in illness that he seeks to clarify. Desire, it turns out, also offers an unanticipated common ground where health-care professionals—caregivers too in their medical role—may meet with patients and families in mutual, richer understanding. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture

127. Escaping the melodrama of the ethically impossible, the U.S. sexually transmitted disease studies... (1:02:29)

Date:
2012-09-12
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
In 1990, University of Pittsburgh Public Health Professor John C. Cutler delivered to the university's archives thousands of pages of documents and photographs about an unpublished research project that he ran in Guatemala for the U.S. and Guatemalan governments between 1946 and 1948. Duly cataloged, the files then sat in the library until the mid 2000s, when historian Susan Reverby began to read them as part of her book project on the Tuskegee syphilis studies. Who knew that the infamous U.S. Public Health Service Study of Untreated Syphilis in Tuskegee, Alabama, had an off shore successor? Unlike Tuskegee, the Guatemala studies led by Dr. Cutler involved actual inoculation of sexually transmitted diseases and the paying of sex workers to transmit disease. Unsuspecting and unconsenting prisoners, soldiers, mental patients, and sex workers participated; only some were treated if and when they became infected. In 2009, Professor Reverby returned to the Pittsburgh archive, and in 2010 she wrote up her findings on the Guatemala project. She shared her unpublished article with the late David Sencer, former director of the Centers for Disease Conrol (CDC), who gave the article to the current CDC leadership. The CDC prepared its own report and sent it, along with the Reverby article, up the chain of command to the White House. On Oct. 1, 2010, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton apologized to the Guatemalan government and President Obama telephoned then President Colom in Guatemala to explain. In the spotlight of worldwide media attention, presidential commissions in both countries undertook investigations, and survivors of the study filed suit against the U.S. government. The Guatemala study and its aftermath have urgently renewed debate about the ethics of clinical research involving human participants, especially research carried out with vulnerable populations and in the global arena. In this Medical Center Hour, Susan Reverby discusses how her discovery of the Guatemala study files set in motion international investigative and diplomatic processes and what we can learn from this ethically immoral use of medical science. Bioethicist John Arras, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, will comment on the commission's investigation and its 2011 report, Ethically impossible: STD research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948.

128. Every patient tells a story (1:01:04)

Date:
2013-10-02
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
Physician-author Lisa Sanders, who writes the popular "Diagnosis" column in The New York Times Magazine and "Think Like a Doctor" blog for the New York Times, probes the crucial exchanges between doctor and patient that are at the heart of every medical mystery and its solution. The Koppaka Family Foundation Lecture in Medical Humanities

129. Experiment eleven: dark secrets in the discovery of a wonder drug (1:01:42)

Date:
2016-02-24
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
In 1943, Albert Schatz, a young PhD student at New Jersey's Rutgers Agricultural College, was working on a wartime project testing bacteria from farmyard soil when he discovered streptomycin, a new antibiotic that was the first effective drug against the global killer tuberculosis. Schatz’s professor, Selman Waksman, claimed all credit for the discovery, calling Schatz a mere bench worker, and secretly enriched himself with royalties once the drug was patented by pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck. Schatz fought back in what was one of the most vicious battles ever for credit of a major scientific discovery. Schatz won the title of "co- discoverer" and a share of the royalties, but, in 1952, Waksman alone was awarded a Nobel Prize. Schatz disappeared into academic obscurity. This Medical Center Hour features journalist Peter Pringle, whose recent book Experiment Eleven probes this gripping, scandalous story and its diverse global repercussions— for scientific inquiry and mentoring, for research ethics, and for the evolution of Big Pharma. Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

130. Extraordinary stories of ordinary life: Radio Diaries (1:03:33)

Date:
2019-01-23
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
January 23, 2019 Joe Richman Since 1996, the Radio Diaries project has been giving people audio recorders and working with them to report on their own lives and histories. Collaborating with teens and octogenarians, persons with chronic and terminal illness, prisoners and prison guards, gospel preachers and bra saleswomen, the famous and the unknown, the project tells extraordinary stories of ordinary life. With stories aired on NPR, BBC, This American Life, and its own podcast, Radio Diaries has pioneered a new form of citizen journalism and, along the way, garnered every major award in broadcast journalism. This Medical Center Hour welcomes Radio Diaries’ founding director, Joe Richman, to share stories and draw parallels with health care practice, where, daily, clinicians traffic in the “extraordinary stories of ordinary life.” The Edward W. Hook Lecture in Medicine and the Arts / Medical Grand Rounds Co-presented with the Department of Medicine, UVA

131. Fair Ellen (04:24)

Date:
Summary:
Performance location: Roanoke County, Virginia, United States

132. First nations' resilience: two communities take on an epidemic (2:01:44)

Date:
2017-09-27
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
When the First Nations of Big River and Ahtahkakoop in Canada's Saskatchewan province realized they had an HIV epidemic within their rural communities, their leadership and health centers rallied community members to determine the social and structural issues behind the epidemic. One of the driving factors proved to be injection drug use. Big River and Ahtahkakoop then developed culturally competent, community-based care to address the intertwined issues of HIV, hepatitis C, and substance use. In this presentation, spokespersons from these two communities describe how they took on these epidemics and discuss the solutions that have worked for them. What can other communities struggling similarly with substance abuse and related infectious disease outbreaks learn from these First Nations' grassroots responses? Are there lessons here for communities in Virginia, where, on average, three people die each day from opioid overdose? Co-presented with the Department of Medicine and the Center for Global Health, in conjunction with the conference, "Best Practices in Community Mobilization in Response to Substance Use and Related Epidemics"

133. Five easy steps to metaphysical fitness (1:01:34)

Date:
2013-10-09
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
Emily Levine does for science what Jon Stewart does for news: she critiques it, she makes it relevant, she makes it funny. She brings her experiences as a patient in search of a diagnosis and a curative path to physical health and notes that in order to regain metaphysical health, she had to enter a universe of randomness, uncertainty, and turbulence. She reasons that only quantum physics and chaos theory can make sense of this new universe, and possibly of medicine today. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture

136. Fred Frith Trio - Old Cabell Hall 10.04.19 (54:10)

Date:
2019-10-04
Main contributors:
McIntire Department of Music
Summary:
Fred Frith Trio: Fred Frith, guitar Jason Hoopes, bass Jordan Glenn, drums Special Guests: Susana Santos Silva, trumpet Heike Liss, video Friday, October 4, 2019 8:00 pm Old Cabell Hall Auditorium University of Virginia The Fred Frith Trio began life almost by accident in 2013. A couple of low key local gigs gave rise to a European tour, a debut record on Intakt, and then another tour a couple of years later. By now the group has created an identity that seems to revolve around memories of a bygone psychedelic era filtered through the lens of razor-sharp improvisation. Whether this will remain the prevalent focus remains to be seen. Their last Intakt CD, Closer to the Ground, has been described as “a gripping piece of spontaneous timelessness,” “a vital statement from a singular artist and his inventive crew,” and “a magical, transcendent world.” The trio regularly cooperates with musical guests such as trumpeter Susana Santos Silva or saxophonist Lotte Anker, and visual artist Heike Liss. Fred Frith is a songwriter, composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist best known for the reinvention of the electric guitar that began with Guitar Solos in 1974. He learned his craft as both improviser and composer playing in rock bands, notably Henry Cow, and creating music in the recording studio. Much of his compositional output has been commissioned by choreographers and filmmakers, but his work has also been performed by Ensemble Modern, Hieronymus Firebrain, Arditti Quartet, Robert Wyatt, Bang on a Can All Stars, Concerto Köln, and Rova Sax Quartet, among quite a few others. Fred enthusiastically records and performs all over the place with icons of contemporary music, younger players you may never have heard of, and everyone in between. He is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s award-winning documentary film Step Across the Border. Jordan Glenn, drums, spent his formative years in Oregon drawing cartoons, taking dance classes from his aunt, and putting on plays with his sisters. As he got older, he began making movies with his friends and studying lots of jazz, classical, and rock music. In 2006, he relocated to the Bay Area where he has since worked closely with Fred Frith, William Winant, Zeena Parkins, Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, John Schott, Dominique Leone, Lisa Mezzacappa, Karl Evangelista, Michael Coleman, and the bands Jack O’ The Clock, Arts & Sciences, Beep!, tUnE-yArDs, and the Oakland Active Orchestra. Jordan leads and conducts the long-standing trio Wiener Kids—and its ten piece expansion, The Wiener Kids Family Band—and directs the conduction ensemble Beak. Jason Hoopes, bass, was born and raised in the mountains of Northern California. He began teaching himself to play guitar and bass in high school after discovering thrash-metal, and eventually found himself at Mills College where he met Jordan Glenn and studied with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, and Joëlle Léandre. Since graduating from Mills, Jason has become a highly sought after bassist in the Bay Area’s diverse and explosive music scene. Primarily recognized for his work with the critically acclaimed avant- rock band Jack O’ The Clock, as well as with Annie Lewandowski’s powerdove and Dominique Leone, he also improvises in a wide range of contexts. Susana Santos Silva is a Portuguese trumpet player, improviser, and composer based in Stockholm, Sweden. In the last years, she has been considered by the international press as one of the strongest emerging voices in contemporary jazz and improvised music, “one of the most exciting improvisers in the world” (Downbeat). With a singular approach/voice that comes out of a comprehensive spectrum of influences, from classical and contemporary music to jazz and textural sound art, she is interested in stretching the boundaries of the instrument and exploring new ways of expression within music. Her music has been described as “startling, intoxicating, ecstatic, stoically intense, beautiful, overwhelming, mesmerizing, innovative, bold and creative.” She leads her projects Impermanence and Life and Other Transient Storms and co-leads duos with Kaja Draksler and Torbjörn Zetterberg—also in trio with Hampus Lindwall, Child of Illusion and Hearth. In 2018, she released her first solo album, All the Rivers, on Clean Feed Records. Much in demand, she has played, among many others, with Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Joëlle Léandre, Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn, Paul Lovens, Mats Gustafsson, and Hamid Drake. Heike Liss has been developing and refining tools that allow her to mix and digitally draw over personal video footage in response to and in dialogue with improvised live music. Drawing Sound is a collaboration with her partner and traveling companion Fred Frith. Together they have performed with musical improvisers such as Lotte Anker, Ikue Mori, Okkyung Lee, Chris Cutler, Susana Santos Silva, and Shelley Hirsch among others. Heike also performs live visuals with skratchklang, her duo with violinist/composer Thea Farhadian. Heike takes her cues from the people and the world around her and works in a variety of media, including video, photography, drawing, sculpture, site specific installation, and public intervention. Her award-winning work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and at film and music festivals. She has collaborated with choreographers Sonsherée Giles and François Verret; musicians Ellen Fullman, GAW, Marcus Weiss, Caroline Penwarden, and Theresa Wong; multi-media artists Ellen Lake, Nomi Talisman, and Michael Trigilio; painter Soffia Saemundsdottir; and poet Lyn Hejinian, to name a few. She lives and works in Oakland and Basel and teaches Transdisciplinary Art at the Universidad Austral de Chile.

137. Freeing patients' BRCA data (1:03:14)

Date:
2013-11-06
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
On 13 June 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down patents on the hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (BRCA) genes. One company, Utah-based Myriad Genetics, claimed ownership of those genes and both marketed and processed the test for them. Myriad now controls the genetic data of all the persons tested for BRCA. In the wake of the 9-0 ruling against Myriad, there's considerable debate about who owns this genetic information and who should control it. Should it be held by a private company or in a commons? Should control rest with the BRCA+ community? "Free the Data," a new grass-roots campaign, brings voices of BRCA+ individuals and biomedical investigators alike into this debate. In this Medical Center Hour, documentary filmmaker Joanna Rudnick, together with law and medical experts from UVA, discuss what's at stake in freeing the data. Co-presented with the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life, the Department of Public Health Sciences, and the Cancer Center's Breast Care Program, UVA The Hollingsworth Lecture in Practical Ethics

139. Galileo’s middle finger: heretics, activists, and the search for justice in science (1:02:57)

Date:
2016-03-23
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
Alice Dreger’s newest book, Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, had its origins in social and scientific controversies having to do with the politics of sex, especially social and medical treatment of so-called intersex individuals. Ms. Dreger’s investigations into this aspect of human identity and intersex rights engaged her with both sides of a heated debate and also with issues of freedom and justice in science. As she says, “Science and social justice require each other to be healthy, and both are critically important to human freedom. . . . [P]ursuit of evidence is probably the most pressing moral imperative of our time. All of our work as scholars, activities, and citizens of democracy depends on it. Yet it seems that, especially when questions of human identity are concerned, we’ve built up a system in which scientists and social justice advocates are fighting in ways that poison the soil on which both depend. It’s high time we think about this mess we’ve created, about what we’re doing to each other and to democracy itself.” In this Medical Center Hour, Ms. Dreger addresses these concerns—for science, justice, and academic freedom—at a time when pursuit of knowledge can clash with established interests, worldviews, and ideas about social progress. Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series