Event: Book Talk by Author & Professor Carl Elliott
Title: The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No
Date and Time: Wednesday, May 22nd from 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Location: 856 Health Health Sciences Quad, COHS Room 3130
Free Raffle: A draw will be held at the end of the talk & five copies of the book will be given away to attendees
The UCI Center for Health Ethics and Department of Health, Society, and Behavior are hosting a book talk by Carl Elliott, MD, PhD, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. The presentation will take place from 12:00-1:00 PM Wednesday, May 22nd, in COHS 3130 at the UCI Health Sciences Complex on 856 Health Sciences Quad. (Take the elevator to the third floor, walk straight ahead down the hall, and look for Room 3130 on the left side of the hallway.) Individuals unable to attend in-person and wanting to participate on Zoom should register in advance here. For attendees traveling to the UCI College of Health Sciences Building by vehicle and requiring parking, parking-related information is available here.
At the event, Professor Elliott will discuss his new book, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No. Published May 14 by W.W. Norton & Company, Elliott’s book examines six notorious cases of abusive medical research and explores the actions and experiences of the whistleblowers who helped expose these instances of wrongdoing. The book pays particular attention to the personal and professional losses and sacrifices experienced by whistleblowers who confronted and exposed malfeasance in their home institutions.
The cases explored in the book extend from the infamous U.S. Public Health Service Untreated Syphilis Study that took place from 1932 to 1972 and involved six hundred black men from whom informed consent was not obtained and established treatments were deliberately withheld, to the disturbing Dan Markingson case at the University of Minnesota, and the recent regenerative medicine research scandal featuring thoracic surgeon Paolo Macchiarini and the Karolinska Institute.
Kirkus Reviews describes the book as “a disturbingly eye-opening must-read.” An early review in Publishers Weekly states, “Detailing the extreme pressures to stay loyal that whistleblowers face, Elliott paints a damning portrait of the medical community’s workplace culture. Readers will be outraged and enthralled.”
Additional information about the book can be found in a guest essay published by The New York Times, an interview published in the Boston Globe, an NPR interview on 1A, a Noncompliant podcast episode, an interview published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a commentary in Biopolitical Times, and a book review in Psychology Today.
At the conclusion of the book talk, a free raffle will be conducted and five in-person attendees will be selected by random draw to receive copies of The Occasional Human Sacrifice.
Professor Elliott’s previous publications include Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream, White Coat Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine, and A Philosophical Disease: Bioethics, Culture, and Identity. Elliott is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award, the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library of Congress, University of Sydney International Visiting Research Fellowship, and a Weatherhead Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Individuals wanting to learn more about this event are welcome to contact Professor and UCI Center for Health Ethics Director Leigh Turner at leigh.turner@UCI.edu. The gathering is open to UCI faculty members, staff, students, trainees and postdoctoral scholars, and community members.
