Seminars and Events at DAHSM

(Archive of News and Events Here)

UCSF History of Health Sciences Colloquium
(2007/8 schedule)

UCSF/Berkeley Medical Anthropology Colloquium
(2007/8 schedule)

M Margaret Clark Lecture 2008
Thursday, September 11th
Location: Parnassus HSW 300
12:00 noon to 2:00pm

Please join us after the talk for a reception and light refreshments


Barbara Koenig, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Mayo College of Medicine, and Co-Director, Program in Professionalism and Bioethics, University of Minnesota

Predictive Genomic Risk Assessment: Imagining the Future of Personalized Medicine

A vision of the medicine of the future as "personalized, predictive, and preventive" has been touted by genome scientists as well as biomedical entrepreneurs.  Conventional ethical analysis has focused narrowly on avoiding harm without attention to the social transformations a truly personalized medicine may yield.  The lecture will survey the broad cultural background shaping patients' hopes, wishes, and desires, while providing a report of the first anthropological study of healthy executives receiving predictive genomic risk assessment as part of routine preventive care.