Did I mention they’re short?

Two interesting articles on two types of science crossover:

Let’s Not Crowd Me, I’m Only a Scientist (Newsweek)

Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy (NYT)

—Irene L.

Potential Keynote Speaker – Jeffrey Baker, MD, PhD

Here are some of the background information on Dr. Baker below. I had Dr. Baker for History of Medicine (FOCUS: Prospective Health Care) last semester and really enjoyed his class. His teaching style is very dynamic and we (students) almost always engage in very lively conversations and debates regarding the course material of the day.

~ Runbin

Dr. Baker is a pediatrician who is also a historian.  He describes his research interests on his webpage as follows:

“My formal training (PhD) is in the history of medicine. I am particularly interested in the history of Pediatrics in the following areas of study.
- Neonatal Medicine
- Preventive Pediatrics
- Childhood Immunizations
-Autism

My current work focuses on childhood vaccine safety controversies, and their relation to broader social and cultural forces in the United States and Britain.”

You can see more information on his profile pages for four different departments/centers with which he’s affiliated (each has a somewhat different profile!)

http://csmeh.mc.duke.edu/people_baker.html

http://spiritualityandhealth.duke.edu/faculty/baker.html

http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/history/faculty/jeffrey.baker

http://www.dukehealth.org/physicians/2BA0F01DEC3A594A85256DFD006A9318

~Abhijit

Keynote speaker nominee: Margaret Humphreys

Another possible good keynote speaker for our “Two Cultures” symposium would be Margaret Humphreys, Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine & Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine.  Professor Humphreys was affiliated with the USP in its early days and is exemplary in her approach to interdisciplinarity.  She describes her research interests as:

My major research interest is the history of disease in America, especially in the South. Until the last half of the twentieth century diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, pellagra, and hookworm marked the south as tropical, impoverished, and strikingly different from the rest of the United States. My recent work concerns the history of medicine in the American Civil war. I teach and read broadly in the history of public health, medicine, race, biology, and infectious diseases.

Professor Humphreys has numerous publications, including books and articles.  Among her books are Yellow Fever and the South, (Rutgers University Press, 1992), Malaria: Poverty, Race and Public Health in the United States (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) and most recently a book called Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

She teaches at the undergraduate, graduate and professional school level with undergraduate courses in History, including through the Focus program; graduate courses through History and the graduate certificate program on History and Philosophy of Science Technology and Medicine; and in the School of Medicine.

For more on Professor Humphreys, see her bio on the history website at:

http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/history/meh

Tori

Symposium Speakers – Divinity Magazine article on Ray Barfield, M.D., Ph.D.

winter 2009 15

Ray Barfield’ s Epiphany of Presence
LEADING LIVES OF CONSEQUENCE
by Jonathan Goldstein
Divinity Magazine
When Ray Barfield was a second-year resident at Eggleston Children’s Hospital in Atlanta, he learned how parents and doctors alike can lose sight of what’s most important when a child is terminally ill.  Barfield was part of a team at the hospital—affiliated with Emory University School of Medicine—treating the 3-year-old son of an Emory pediatrician and faculty member. The child was in the intensive care unit, suffering from a relapse of neuroblastoma, an aggressive childhood cancer that is nearly always fatal when it recurs.

Barfield watched as other doctors, especially the boy’s mother, proposed increasingly invasive treatments—even some that are clearly ineffective against neuroblastoma. Meanwhile, the child was sullen, stuck in a sterile intensive care unit, connected by uncomfortable leads and tubes to monitors, intravenous fluid bags and other equipment. All the while he was running out of time.

“We were just desperate to treat this child,” Barfield says. “He was in pain because of what we were doing, and no one was dealing with the fact  that he was going to die. Almost no one survives a relapse of neuroblastoma.”  Finally, the boy’s mother—a mentor to Barfield—realized that medical intervention wasn’t working. She took her son home, where he could spend his final hours with loved ones in familiar surroundings, his pain controlled by morphine.

“At home, his grouchiness went away,” says Barfield, who is affiliated with the Institute on Care at the End of Life at Duke Divinity School. “He had two or three good days with his family, and then he died peacefully.”

It was a defining experience for Barfield, who last fall joined the faculty of the Divinity School and the Duke Medical Center and is developing a new model of pediatric care.  Cooperating with physicians, nurses, faculty and administrators from across the university, Barfield is working to help practitioners and families make better choices for children who are chronically or terminally ill.