Events
3600 Civic Center Blvd., 8-031
Penn Bioethics Seminar (PBS): "Why They Blow the Whistle: Exposing Abuses in Medical Research" - Carl Elliott, MD, PhD
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2026-03-31 12:00:00
2026-03-31 13:00:00
America/New_York
Penn Bioethics Seminar (PBS): "Why They Blow the Whistle: Exposing Abuses in Medical Research" - Carl Elliott, MD, PhD
Why They Blow the Whistle: Exposing Abuses in Medical Research
Carl Elliott, MD, PhD
Professor, Department of Philosophy
University of Minnesota
In popular culture, whistleblowers are conscience-driven heroes who triumph against the odds.
Yet when medical research abuses occur, institutions deny wrongdoing even when it is glaringly obvious, and rarely do mistreated research subjects or their families get any real justice.
Whistleblowing is the exception, not the rule. In many scandals, doctors and other staff members remain silent for years while unwitting research subjects are abused. What is it that leads a rare individual to say no to practices that are deceptive, exploitative or harmful when everyone else remains silent?
Streaming available via Zoom.
Lunch provided- Registration Required.
3600 Civic Center Blvd., 8-031
Penn Medical Ethics
3600 Civic Center Blvd. Room 8-031
2026 Renee Fox Lecture: Joanna Kempner, PhD, "Experiment Perilous, Revisited: Hope, Deceit, and Survival in Psychedelic Science"
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2026-04-07 12:00:00
2026-04-07 13:00:00
America/New_York
2026 Renee Fox Lecture: Joanna Kempner, PhD, "Experiment Perilous, Revisited: Hope, Deceit, and Survival in Psychedelic Science"
Late in her career, Renée Fox worried that bureaucratic medicine had replaced the intimate experiments where courageous physicians and patients navigated uncertainty together. Kempner finds those spaces reconstituted in the psychedelic underground, where people failed by medicine offer support, trade information, test potential treatments, and collect data. In this talk, she asks what happens to those intimate experiments when the underground and the institutions that once ignored them begin to collaborate.
Joanna Kempner, PhD, is an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University, where she studies how culture, politics, and institutions shape science and medicine—particularly what happens when they fail.
Kempner’s most recent, Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine (Hachette, 2024), chronicles how a patient-led community discovered that psilocybin could treat cluster headaches. Her earlier book, Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health (Chicago, 2014), examined how stigma and gender bias shape the treatment of pain. Her award-winning research spans sociology, medicine, bioethics, and health policy, and is often covered by media outlets including the New York Times, NPR, and PBS NewsHour. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
The Renée C. Fox Lecture in Medicine, Culture, and Society was established to honor the legacy of Dr. Fox, whose pioneering work in the sociology of medicine, medical research, and ethics deeply shaped multiple disciplines. Her commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship and critical inquiry continues to inspire this annual event.
3600 Civic Center Blvd. Room 8-031
Penn Medical Ethics
CCB 05-031, 5th Floor, 3600 Civic Center Blvd. (Note: Virtual attendees can join by accessing this link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/95740259034.)
Health Policy Research Seminar: Sumit Agarwal, MD, MPH, PhD, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Health Management & Policy, University of Michigan
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2026-04-09 10:00:00
2026-04-09 11:00:00
America/New_York
Health Policy Research Seminar: Sumit Agarwal, MD, MPH, PhD, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Health Management & Policy, University of Michigan
Co-sponsored with the The Parity Center.
"Rx Kids — Prenatal and Infant Cash Prescriptions."
Rx Kids is the first-ever community-wide cash prescription program for pregnant moms and babies. It launched in January 2024 in Flint, Michigan, and has since expanded to more than 25 communities in Michigan. Dr. Agarwal will share more about the program, why it exists, and its effects on wellbeing and health.
Sumit Agarwal, MD, MPH, PhD is a physician and health economist at the University of Michigan. He is an assistant professor in the medical school and a member of the Institute for Health Policy and Innovation. Dr. Agarwal's research examines the impacts of economic, social, and insurance policies on health. His research also explores several areas related to primary care, including its workforce, quality of care, and payment reform. His work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs. He holds a PhD from Harvard University, an MD from the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine, an MPH from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and primary care at the University of Virginia and a fellowship in General Internal Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Agarwal currently sees patients as a primary care physician at the University of Michigan.
CCB 05-031, 5th Floor, 3600 Civic Center Blvd. (Note: Virtual attendees can join by accessing this link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/95740259034.)
Penn Medical Ethics
Hybrid: 11-102AB 3600 Civic Ctr Blvd (and virtual via Zoom)
Research Ethics & Policy Series (REPS): "Hoping for a Phoenix: Building a Better NIH on the Rubble" - Robert Cook-Deegan, MD
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2026-04-14 12:00:00
2026-04-14 13:00:00
America/New_York
Research Ethics & Policy Series (REPS): "Hoping for a Phoenix: Building a Better NIH on the Rubble" - Robert Cook-Deegan, MD
Hoping for a Phoenix: Building a Better NIH on the Rubble
Robert Cook-Deegan, MD
Professor
School for the Future of Innovation in Society
Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes
Arizona State University
The National Institute of Health (and a National Cancer Institute) went into World War II as a small government lab, a bit player in biomedical research dominated by the Carnegie Corporation, Rockefeller Foundation, and academic-industry collaborations in endocrinology and biochemistry. During the War, biomedical research went Big, with massive efforts to develop vaccines, antimalarials, penicillin and corticosteroids. The National Institutes of Health as we know it emerged with the release of penicillin contract left-overs that initiated the extramural grants program. Year after year, with a few exceptions, Congress piled money on a growing base. A vibrant political coalition fueled meteoric growth. Institutes proliferated, and NIH became the Gigantor of global biomedical research, spawning Nobel Prizes and sometimes finding cures. Its peer review system sustained broad areas of research, and fueled the molecular biology revolution. But NIH also began to ossify as layers of procedure accumulated. Mary Lasker lamented NIH’s focus on scientific curiosity even as patients died, and tried to pull NCI out of NIH. Grant proposals became phone books; peer review favored conservative projects sure of success at the expense of wildcatting. Private philanthropies and a new ARPA-H filled some gaps. But decades of calls for structural reform and simplification of paperwork led to little. The advent of a federal Administration suspicious of elites and tin-eared regarding health research wrought havoc, exposing vulnerabilities that had worried scientists about federal dependency even as World War II ended. Those fears came home to roost in 2025. Yet after a tumultuous year of grant cuts and staff reductions the budget remains stable. Is there an opportunity for improvement, not by beheading and decimating, but by rethinking and true reform? Let’s explore the possibilities.
Registration required; Lunch provided
Streaming available via Zoom.
Hybrid: 11-102AB 3600 Civic Ctr Blvd (and virtual via Zoom)
Penn Medical Ethics
3600 Civic Center Blvd., Rm 8-031
MEHP Special Lecture: "Kinks in the Triple Helix" - Robert Cook-Deegan, MD
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2026-04-15 09:00:00
2026-04-15 10:00:00
America/New_York
MEHP Special Lecture: "Kinks in the Triple Helix" - Robert Cook-Deegan, MD
Kinks in the Triple Helix
Robert Cook-Deegan, MD
Professor - School for the Future of Innovation in Society
Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes
Arizona State University
Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff proposed the triple helical model of innovation (government, industry, and academe) three decades ago. Previously, Vannevar Bush attributed victory in World War II to successful partnerships among the three strands and proposed that creation of new knowledge through research was a crucial government responsibility. Biomedical research subsequently grew by several orders of magnitude, driven by public investment, transformation of the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, and the emergence of biotechnology. Yet, key kinks in the triple helix have never been fully untangled: who owns what, who should capture the returns from new goods and services, who receives credit for their creation and development, how does the public ultimately benefit from the research “investments” made with their tax dollars, and what ownership stake, if any, do individuals have in their genes, genomes, and even malignant cancers? This talk explores concrete cases, enduring legal and policy dilemmas, and current proposals shaping how discoveries move from bench to bedside.
Registration Required: Breakfast Provided
3600 Civic Center Blvd., Rm 8-031
Penn Medical Ethics
To be added to MEHP's events listserv, please contact lisa.bailey@pennmedicine.upenn.edu.