CBH Talk | Life, Death, and Bioethics

What is bioethics and how does it shape the decisions we make in our own lives?

Through powerful first-person storytelling and live audience discussion, this program invites you to wrestle with real-world dilemmas at the intersection of medicine, technology, law, and ethics. Should people be able to hasten their death when they are terminally ill? Should a child be conceived to save the life of another? These are not abstract questions; they are the kinds of wrenching choices individuals, families, and health care professionals confront day in and day out.

Join the Center for Brooklyn History to celebrate the launch of Season 2 of playing god?, the podcast from the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. The series brings listeners into the gray areas where medical possibility collides with ethical complexity, raising questions about our values as individuals and as a society.

Featuring leading Johns Hopkins faculty Jeffrey Kahn, the Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the university’s Berman Institute of Bioethics; Anna Mastroianni, professor of bioethics and law in the Berman Institute; and Lauren Arora Hutchinson, director of the Institute’s iDeas Lab, the evening blends narrative audio, expert framing, and open conversation to create an interactive space for reflection, debate, and shared inquiry.

Following the program, join us for a light reception with speakers and fellow attendees.

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Participants

Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH, is the Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, and the Levi Professor of Bioethics and Public Policy. His work focuses on the ethics of research, ethics and public health including global health, and ethics and emerging biomedical technologies. He speaks widely in the US and abroad, has published five books and over 160 articles, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.  He is the Executive Producer (with Anna Mastroianni) of the award-winning playing god? podcast.

 

 

Anna C. Mastroianni, JD, MPH, is Research Professor in Bioethics and Law at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Her scholarship explores complex issues at the intersection of law, bioethics, public health, and health policy, with a particular focus on the challenges of research in pregnancy, genetic technologies, and family building through assisted reproductive technologies. She has published widely across these areas and is recognized for her contributions to major debates in bioethics and public policy. She is executive producer (with Jeffrey Kahn) of the award-winning playing god? podcast and a creator of Moral Histories: Voices of the Founders of Bioethics.

 

 

Lauren Arora Hutchinson, PhD, previously a BBC journalist, is an award-winning audio storyteller, an academic, and the inaugural director of the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg Bioethics iDeas Lab. The Lab serves as both an intellectual incubator and a creative hub, including a range of methods and topics, from engaging nearly a quarter million podcast listeners about ethical issues raised by medical innovation, to using film to inform lawmakers about vital support for society’s most vulnerable or bolstering healthcare workers facing unprecedented professional challenges. She is also the host of the award-winning playing god? podcast.