On Wednesday, May 23 at 7 p.m., Carleton College will host a public panel discussion on the ethics of healthcare access in America. Entitled “Healthcare as a Human Right: Access & Barriers,” this event will take place in the College’s Weitz Center for Creativity, Room 236, and is free and open to the public.
Americans may agree on a citizen’s rights to life and liberty, but does the nation have a moral duty to ensure healthcare? As Carleton’s EThiC initiative asks in this term’s “Questions” blog (go.carleton.edu/thequestion), “Is access to healthcare a universal human right?” This panel discussion will provide some helpful context for that debate by looking at moral and practical barriers that have emerged in assuring fair use of America’s healthcare system.
The panel will feature Carl Elliott, renowned bioethicist and frequent contributor to The New Yorker, who will speak on the ways in which private research sites test new drugs on homeless schizophrenics who are driven to participate in studies by poverty and lack of access to healthcare. Also participating are Charlie Mandile, executive director of Health Finders Collaborative of Rice County, who will discuss the barriers to health care erected by poverty and immigration status in Southern Minnesota; and Daniel Groll, Carleton philosophy professor, who will frame the discussion in its larger humanistic, ethical dimensions.
This event is sponsored by EThiC (Ethical Inquiry at Carleton) and the Carleton College Humanities Center and is part of the Center’s “Perspectives in the Humanities” series. For more information, contact Susannah Ottaway, professor of history and the David and Marian Adams Bryn-Jones Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Humanities, at (507) 222-5446 or online at sottaway@carleton.edu. The Weitz Center for Creativity is located at 320 East Third Street in Northfield.