Battle of Ideas Festival

This year’s Battle of Ideas, a two-day festival of social, political and cultural discussion taking place in London, 1 & 2 November 2008. Tickets are on sale now.

There is a Battle for Biomedicine strand and there are other science and medicine-related debates:

Battle for Biomedicine
Whose data is it anyway?
Boozy Britain
Hypochondriac Nation

Related sessions
Abortion: the hard arguments
Are we what we eat?
CSI Mania
Can GM crops feed the world?
Health promotion: improving children’s lives or demonising parents?
Are drugs ruining sport?
Is our behaviour determined by our evolution?
Trust me – I’m a professional

According to Claire Fox, whom you may recognise as a regular member of the panel on R4's 'The Moral Maze': 'The Battle of Ideas is a space where ideas can be argued for and fought over without constraint. Free speech allowed! The Battle of Ideas is in its fourth year and is now a major fixture in London’s intellectual calendar. This year over 1500 expected attendees will attend 70 sessions with 300 speakers, as well as a number of festival attractions and exhibitions.' The Battle of Ideas was described by Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, as ‘a rare opportunity to debate first hand with those involved in the great issues of our time’.


As well as the Battle for Biomedicine, this year’s strands examine cutting-edge debates around Prosperity (emerging economies), The Family and America.

Other highlights include:
Immigration – the more the scarier? / Stealing Picasso / From Fatwa to Jihad / Eco-imperialism? / Cricket – more than a game? / What is a city of literature? / CSI Mania / Credit crunch demystified / Scared of the Kids / Malthus’ return…

The festival has sold out in advance for three years running, so you may want to get tickets as soon as possible. The event is held at the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU and is organised by the Institute of Ideas in conjunction with SAB Miller, BT, The Times/Times Online, and the ESRC, alongside many other partners and sponsors.

Performing Medicine Season

What a treat for those interested in Medical Humanities! Performing Medicine is a wonderful series of events, including debates, art performances, workshops and a symposium on the uses of arts in medical training. Here is the full programme, or visit their official website.

CONVERSATIONS

Power
With Faith McLellan, Brian Hurwitz, Elaine Showalter, Thomas Csordas
30 October 7-9pm Free
Wellcome Collection, 83 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE
More information
Book Online Tel: 020 7611 2222

Health and Human Rights With Richard Ashcroft, Paul Heritage, Vivienne Nathanson, Nick Ridout
5 November 7-9pm Free
Dana Centre, Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD
More information

The Medical Gaze With Bobby Baker and Kira O'Reilly
2 December 7-9pm £10 (£8 conc)
Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
More information

The Invention of the Body With Sarah Simblet
4 December 7-9pm Free
Wellcome Collection, 83 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE
More information
Book Online Tel: 020 7611 2222

Embodiment With Antonio Damasio and guest artists
11 December 7-9pm £10 (£8 concessions)
Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
More information

ART INJECTIONS

Ether Frolics Sound and Fury with Artists from the Shunt Collective
3 November 8pm Free
John Ellis Lecture Theatre, Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel Road, London E1 1BB
More information Book Online Tel: 020 7749 0555

What Tammy needs to know about getting old and having sex Lois Weaver
17 November 8pm Free
John Ellis Lecture Theatre, Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel Road, London E1 1BB
More information Book Online Tel: 020 7749 0555

Must Peggy Shaw and the Clod Ensemble
27, 29 & 30 November 7-9pm
Free
Wellcome Collection, 83 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE
More information

Ball Brian Lobel
9 December 8pm Free
John Ellis Lecture Theatre, Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel Road, London E1 1B
More information Book Online Tel: 020 7749 0555

WORKSHOPS

The Expressive Body With John Wright and Suzy Willson
8 November 10am-5pm Free
Sadler's Wells, Rosebery Avenue, London EC1R 4TN
More information Book Online Tel: 020 7749 0555

Difference With Split Britches and Dr. Alison Mears
19 November 10am-5pm Free
Wellcome Collection,
83 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE
More information Book Online Tel: 020 7749 0555

Ways of Seeing With Liz Ellis
20 November 2-4pm Free
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
More information Book Online Tel: 020 7749 0555

Making Art in Healthcare Settings With Deborah Padfield, Helen Marshall and Rosetta Life
22 November 10am-5pm Free
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
More information Book Online Tel: 020 7749 0555

Anatomical Art With Sarah Simblet
5th December 10am-5pm Free
Wellcome Collection,
83 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE
More information Book Online Tel: 020 7749 0555

SYMPOSIUM

The Uses of Arts in Medical Training
21 November 10am-6pm £150 per delegate
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry,
Turner Street, London E1 2AD
More information Contact us Tel: 020 7749 0555

EXTRA CURRICULAR OPEN PROGRAMME

The Recovery Room
Every Monday from 6 October - 8 December 1-2pm
Free
Room 3.04, Garrod Building (Old Medical College Building)
More information No booking required

How Do I Look?
From September 2008 Free
More information Contact us for an appointment

'Cancer Tales'

Posted on behalf of Lauren Trisk:

Just wanted to let you know about an evening of theatre and debate I am organising at the Royal Society of Medicine (1 Wimpole Street, W1G 0AE) on Friday 10th October (flyer attached). 'Cancer Tales', two short plays about women and their journey through cancer will be staged followed by a panel discussion/Q and A session and a wine reception.

The plays were written by Nell Dunn and a snippet from a review in the BMJ reads as follows: 'Five personal histories of pain, hopelessness, hope, resignation and love are the ingredients for Cancer Tales. There five real stories take us to to real problems. The monologues and dialogues are brilliantly written, transporting the audience into the minds and the lives of the characters.

The set is minimal, the play mesmerising' Both Nell Dunn and Trevor Walker, the play's director, will take part in a panel discussion on emotion and communication in a clinical setting after the staging of the plays. Professor Chris Fowler will be chairing the panel and the TV and news presenter Anna Ford and Jed Mercurio, a doctor turned author and screenwriter of the accliamed television series 'Bodies' will also sit on the panel.

Registration is from 6:30pm and the event starts at 7pm, followed by a wine reception at 8:40pm. Tickets cost £10 (£5 concessions) and can be booked online at https://icex.imperial.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.rsm.ac.uk/students/stg101.php It would be great to see you there!

Word of Mouth special on medical communication

I thoroughly recommend an excellent edition of Radio 4's 'Word of Mouth' devoted to medical communication. It includes a lively discussion on the pros and cons of 'teaching' communication skills. Shockingly, most medical students emerge from medical school communicating less well than when they started, communication having become ritualised at the expense of sincerity.

The programme also includes a discussion on how pain is talked about. Is a 'menu' of pain words helpful or is it overly constraining? One patient, Elizabeth McClung, explained how she finds the medical repetoire of pain words very limited (stabbing, throbbing, burning, nagging, radiating) and unable to cope with patients' metaphors. There are no easy answers, but the programme is a thoughtful look at it all.

Nobel Textiles at the ICA

14 September 2008 - 21 September 2008

Five Nobel-winning scientists have been paired with five textile designers as part of a two-year project between Central Saint Martins College and the Medical Research Council, and the result is Nobel Textiles: a brilliant week of exhibitions and events at the ICA and in St James's Park.

Five greenhouses in St James's Park will contain self-folding fabrics, urban food production, garden furniture and more, with further work in the digital studio and bar.

Philippa Brock has collaborated with Sir Aaron Klug (Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1982), responding with a collection of Jacquard weaves that explore the methods of transforming 2-dimensional weaving approaches into 3-dimensional models.

Carole Collet has collaborated with John Sulston (Nobel Prize for Medicine, 2002 with Sydney Brenner and Robert Horwitz), creating a collection of garden furniture based on the principles of programmed degradation.

Rachel Kelly has been working with Tim Hunt (Nobel Prize for Medicine, 2001), and has designed a collection of transparent wallpapers and paper lanterns responding to his discovery of cycling proteins which appear and disappear.

Shelley Fox has collaborated with Peter Mansfield (Nobel Prize for Medicine, 2003), and has created a fashion collection based on the MRI mapping of the body fat of 6 volunteers.

Rachel Wingfield has collaborated with John E. Walker (Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1997), to create architectural scale textiles that explore urban food production, in response to John’s elucidation of the tiny motor that cycles energy in our cells.

Check out the details here for a series of associated events.

Transplant

Transplant is a large-scale photographic sound installation that explores the experiences of transplant patients and the extraordinary issues raised by this invasive, last-option medical procedure. Showing this month at the Nunnery Gallery from Friday 4th September, it creates an immersive environment, weaving subtly revealing portraits and striking photographs of the hospital with intensely personal narratives, often recorded at the bedside, and sounds derived from the patients’ surroundings.

Photographer Tim Wainwright and sound artist John Wynne were artists-in-residence together for one year at Harefield Hospital, one of the world’s leading centres for heart and lung transplants. Working closely together, they photographed and recorded patients, the devices they’re attached to or have implanted in them, and the hospital itself. In this ambitious new work, Wainwright and Wynne investigate the boundaries between documentation and abstraction and search for new relationships between sound and image.

“Through all these differences and similarities of sound and vision, seeing and hearing, looking and listening, a rapprochement emerges in the collaboration. The insistent stillness of a photograph hovers in and out of the temporal movement of spoken language, but both add a powerful sense of human presence and individuality to each other,” said David Toop.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of a book edited by Victoria Hume, manager of rb&h Arts, an independent charity within Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust which made this project possible. Also entitled Transplant, the book contains perspectives on the artists’ work and on the wider issues raised by the project from a range of contributors including writer David Toop, critic Charles Darwent, medical researcher/writer Lesley Sharp, anthropologist Tom Rice, psychologist Claire Hallas and patient Kate Dalziel. The book also contains an exclusive interview with Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, an interview with Tim and John by Angus Carlyle and a DVD by the artists.

The show runs until 28th September and is open Thursday - Sunday 1pm until 6pm. The Nunnery is at 183 Bow Road, London, E3 2SJ. Nearest tube is Bow Road on the Dirstict Line.

Cutting-edge TV

The BBC is showing an admirable commitment to medical history. Last year, there was a 30-part series, The Making of Modern Medicine, on Radio 4, doing for medicine what This Sceptred Isle did for the history of Britain. Last night, a new series started on BBC4: ‘Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery’. First up was a look at brain surgery.

The programme, presented by the engaging Michael Mosley, didn’t attempt to be exhaustive. It featured a few personal stories, mercifully sparing us from the ‘reconstructed by actors’ scenes that blight so many documentaries these days. I’m not usually squeamish, but Mosley demonstrating a transorbital lobotomy (basically hammering an icepick through the eye socket and rummaging about in the brain) was a ‘look away now’ moment. The well-meaning proselytiser of this hit-and-miss technique, Walter Freeman, travelled America in a camper van, lobotomising as he went. Even his son, who was interviewed, thought it ghastly.

Mosley tracked down one of Freeman’s victims, Howard, who at only 12 had been handed over for surgery by his evil stepmother. Howard gamely agreed to have an MRI scan – apparently the first to be performed on anyone with a transorbital lobotomy. ‘I feel so privileged to be here,’ gushed Mosley, momentarily conflating the act of looking at a map with the taking of the trip. There were two ominous lacunae in the parts of his brain associated with impulse control. Howard looked bemused at being told by Mosely what a fantastic individual he was. It’s like being told you’ve been improved by having a hole in the head.

Noevertheless, the minor irritation of Mosely’s sycophancy aside, this is riveting TV. It’s a risky business being a documentary presenter these days. You’re expected, Blue Peter style, to proffer yourself up as an experimental subject. Mosely had his brain electricity interfered with to demonstrate brain geography. It will be interesting to see if he survives the six-week series undamaged by modern medicine.

Meanwhile, Lord Winston takes to the screen again tonight in Superdoctors on BBC1 at 9 pm. This three-parter looks at frontier medicine – using new technology to supposedly enhance medical interventions. From his interview on R4 this morning, it doesn’t sound as if he’s been convinced.