Deinard Memorial Lecture 2010 | Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences

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Prof. Dorothy Roberts, JD is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor; Professor, Department of African-American Studies and Sociology; and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University Law School. She has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction, bioethics, and child welfare.

Prof. Roberts is the author of Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Pantheon, 1997), which received a 1998 Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America, and Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books, 2002), which received research awards from the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community and the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. She is also the co-author of casebooks on constitutional law and women and the law and has published more than 60 articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, and Social Text.

The Deinard Memorial Lecture on Law & Medicine is co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota's Joint Degree Program in Law, Health & the Life Sciences and the Center for Bioethics.

Major support for the series comes from the law firm of Leonard Street & Deinard and the Deinard family.

What's Wrong with Race-Based Medicine?

Prof. Dorothy Roberts, JD
Northwestern University

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
11:30AM - 1:00PM
Location: Theater, Coffman Memorial Union

Professor Dorothy Roberts, JD (Northwestern University), will discuss how the FDA's approval of the first race-specific drug has generated a heated debate about the scientific and political efficacy of race-based medicine. She will place this debate in the context of health disparities and genetic concepts of race and explain why marketing pharmaceuticals on the basis of race is more likely to worsen racial inequities than cure them. Recognizing that race-based medicine raises both medical and political questions, Roberts rejects the dichotomy often claimed by its promoters that we must put aside social justice concerns in order to improve minority health.

Commentators:


Jay Cohn, MD University of Minnesota Professor of Medicine, Cardiovascular Division; Director, Rasmussen Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention	Joycelyn Dorscher, MD University of Minnesota-Duluth Assistant Professor, Family Medicine

Intended Audience: students, faculty, health care professionals, attorneys, patients, researchers, policymakers, and community members.

Following this lecture, participants should be able to:

Describe why marketing pharmaceuticals based on race is likely to worsen racial inequities in health care.
Suggest ways to include social justice concerns when considering ways to improve minority health.

This event is free and open to the public.

Continuing legal education credit (CLE) for attorneys (1.5 hours) has been requested. Advance registration is required to receive continuing education credits.

The University of Minnesota is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Application has been submitted for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit. Determination of credit is pending. It is the policy of the University of Minnesota Office of Continuing Medical Education to ensure balance, independence, objectivity, and scientific rigor in all of its sponsored educational activities.

All participating faculty, course directors, and planning committee members are required to disclose to the program audience any financial relationships related to the subject matter of this program. Disclosure information is reviewed in advance in order to manage and resolve any possible conflicts of interest.