Canada’s Situating Science; Science in Human Contexts research cluster is livestreaming another of their lectures in the Lives of Evidence series on Thursday, March 20, 2014, from the March 18, 2014 announcement,
Patents, Progress, and Commercialized Medicine
James Robert Brown, Professor of Philosophy at University of Toronto
Thursday, March 20 2014, 7:30 PM [AST or 3:30 pm PST]
Alumni Hall, New Academic Building, University of King’s College, 6350 Coburg Rd., Halifax, NS
Part 4 of The Lives of Evidence national lecture series.
Free.
Here’s a link to,
For anyone who likes to check these things out beforehand, here’s a description of the lecture (from the Patents, Progress and Commercialized Medicine event page),
Recent headline-making studies indicate that there is a crisis in medical research. Health issues are increasingly dominated by commercial interests, and this jeopardizes research, evidence and, ultimately, peoples’ health. Patentable solutions, typically drugs, are proposed for health problems while other approaches are ignored. This raises pressing questions: How can we ensure high-quality medicine in light of corporate research funding and massive financial conflicts of interest? How does this effect medicine, ethics, public policy, and politics? Is socialized medical research a viable solution?
Anyone familiar with this blog knows I’ve written many times about patent thickets, patent trolls, and other ways in which patents have been used to block new work and new products. I have written more rarely (i.e., once) about the lack of interest in pursuing nonpatentable solutions to diseases and that was an April 12, 2013 posting about artemisin and malaria.
For anyone interested in the series, Lives of Evidence, here’s more from the series page,
The Lives of Evidence National Lecture Series
Many questions are raised in light of the recent warnings about the “the death of evidence” and “War on Science”. What do we mean by “evidence”? How is evidence interpreted, represented and communicated? How do we create trust in research? What’s the relationship between research, funding and policy? Between evidence, explanations and expertise?
These are but some of the questions explored in the Situating Science national lecture series The Lives of Evidence. The national Situating Science project (www.SituSci.ca) and supporters are launching a multi-part national lecture series examining the cultural, ethical, political, and scientific role of evidence in our world, all of which impact citizens.
“Recent concerns about transparency, conflicts between experts, political interference in the scientific process, and dire warnings about the ‘death of evidence’,” says Situating Science Director Gordon McOuat, “have made it all the more crucial that we examine the origins, meaning and trust in our concepts of ‘evidence’. This lecture series will bring multiple perspectives – historical, philosophical, ethical, scientific – to explore our understanding of evidence and why so much is hinged on ‘getting it right’.”
The page provides a complete list of past and future events.