Capstone Panel: Who Owns my Body and Why Does it Matter?

April 11, 2011
The Go Big Read Capstone event is nearly here! Keep checking back here at our blog all week for features of speakers, panels, films, and more as we gear up for the events this weekend at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.

On April 15th from 1-2:30, stop by for a panel discussion on the human body as property, including issues of consent, identification, regulatory issues, and ownership.

The panel discussion, “Who owns my body and why does it matter?” will be moderated by Ruth Faden, the executive director of the Johns Hopkins University Berman Institute of Bioethics.

Panelists include a variety of experts in related fields, including some from right here at UW Madison. We look forward to hearing from Shubha Ghosh, professor at UW Law School, who has co-authored two casebooks on intellectual property, among numerous other achievements. He is currently working on a project called “Identity and Invention: Patent Activity in the Area of Personalized Medicine.”

Dayle B. DeLancey, another panelist, is an assistant professor in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s Department of Medical History & Bioethics. DeLancey’s research includes race and gender in medicine, the public understanding of medicine, and U.S. public health.

Other UW panelists include Mary Nachreiner of UW Health Organ Procurement Services, and Dr. Timothy Kamp, a Professor of Medicine and the director of the Wisconsin Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. We also look forward to hearing from Martha Anderson, executive vice president of Donor Servicees at the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation.

These many experts will certainly have much to add to our community wide discussion of HeLa and Henrietta Lacks. Ruth Faden, the panel moderator, will also be Friday’s keynote speaker. For more information about her talk, “Henrietta Lacks: Ethics at the Intersection of Health Care and Biomedical Science,” click here for a previous post.

We hope you’ll join Go Big Read for some or all of these exciting capstone experiences. Please click here to RSVP for the events, all of which are free and open to the public.