Medical Ethics: From Antiquity to the Current Pandemic


Date: April 28th 1
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT

One of the effects of the current pandemic was to remind us how much of public health relies on difficult political and ethical decisions. When it comes to deciding the desirability of lockdowns, mass vaccinations, or who should get priority access to health care in emergency situations, medical expertise cannot, in itself, provide the answers. What are the main ethical dilemmas faced by the medical profession today? And how do advances in technology affect the ethics of medical care? We will examine these questions with the help of specialists in the field of medicine and bioethics, as well as with an engagement with the Hippocratic corpus, one of the central, and most influential collection of works in the history of medicine, written at a time when medical and ethical questions were seen as intrinsically intertwined.

Watch the live stream on the Center for Hellenic Studies Youtube Channel.

Welcoming Remarks

Ambassador of Greece to the U.S., Alexandra Papadopoulou

Featured Panelists

Dr. Richard A. Cash – Senior Lecturer on Global Health, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Natalia Linos – Acting Director FXB Center for Health & Human Rights
Dr. Nicolas Prevelakis – Assistant Director of Curricular Development, Center for Hellenic Studies
Dr. Mark Schiefsky – C. Lois P. Grove Professor of the Classics, Harvard University

This event is organized by the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University, and the Embassy of Greece in the United States