The Amazing/Terrifying Future of Medicine
Jacob M. Appel (MD JD MPH HEC-C DFAPA) is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Education at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, where he is Director of Ethics Education in Psychiatry, Assistant Director of the Academy for Medicine and the Humanities, and Medical Director of the Mental Health Clinic at the East Harlem Health Outreach Program. He also teaches graduate students at Albany Medical College’s Alden March Bioethics Institute. Prior to joining the faculty at Mount Sinai, Jacob taught for many years at Brown University and at Yeshiva College, where he was the writer-in-residence. Jacob is the author of five literary novels, ten short story collections, an essay collection, a cozy mystery, a thriller, a volume of poems and a compendium of dilemmas in medical ethics. He is Vice President of the National Book Critics Circle, co-chair of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry’s Committee on Psychiatry & Law, and a Councilor of the New York County Psychiatric Society.
Overview
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR MEDICINE?
The future of medicine is both amazing and terrifying. For the first time in human history, individual scientists and clinicians have the power to alter radically ways in which we live that were never before possible.
The Future of Medicine Could Be Terrifying
In China, a geneticist edits the genes of embryos in an effort to prevent HIV. An Italian surgeon recruits critically-ill patients as candidates for the first human brain transplant. Authorities in California use DNA profiles to capture a notorious serial killer. A Swiss religious sect attempts to clone its own members. Medical technology is advancing at unprecedented speeds—raising the prospect of personalized therapies and cures for diseases like cancer, but also concerns that legal standards and ethical norms have not kept pace with scientific “progress.”
However, The Future of Medicine Could Also Be Amazing
This presentation explores some of the most exciting recent developments in medicine that promise to help us live longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives, ranging from novel reproductive technologies and cutting edge immunotherapies to the harvesting of “big data” and the implementation of new systems of information exchange. We will also address both the ethical challenges that arise when these technologies work as promised, such as who should pay for a drug that costs $1.25 million per dose, and what safeguards, if any, exist for keeping these technologies away from those whose rogue actions could cause irreparable damage to us all.