Medical Ethicist to Speak at Tulane on Our Right to Health Care

UPDATE 2/1/11: NOTICE OF CANCELLATION: Due to severe weather in Massachusetts, organizers are working to find a new date for the lecture.

Do human beings have a right to health care? And what does that right entail? These are questions that will be addressed by Norman Daniels, a leading medical ethicist and professor at Harvard University, in a lecture hosted by Tulane University. Free and open to the public, the lecture will be held on Friday, Feb. 4 at 4 p.m. in Room 203 of the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life.

“As a philosopher and medical ethicist, Professor Daniels offers a valuable perspective on a question of fundamental importance for health care policy and the debate over health care reform,” says Mary Olson, an event organizer and an associate professor of economics at Tulane.

Daniels is the Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health at Harvard School of Public Health. He is the author of eleven books, including Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly, which integrates his work into a comprehensive theory of justice for health. Daniels was a member of the Ethics Working Group of the Clinton White House Health Care Task Force and recently served on an Institute of Medicine Committee on the use of Cost Effectiveness Analysis in regulatory contexts. He serves on the Medicare Coverage Advisory Commission and on the Ethics Advisory Board of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A reception will follow Daniels" lecture, which is sponsored by the Murphy Institute"s Center for Ethics and Public Affairs. For more information, contact Margaret Keenan at mkeenan@tulane.edu or 504-862-3236. Additional information may be found at http://murphy.tulane.edu/