Category: Events

CHHS Research Seminar (online) – Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster

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We were pleased to host Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster on November 11th, who presented a paper to the Centre for Health, Humanities and Science members entitled ‘Complaint and the 1979 Royal Commission on the NHS’.

In 1979, the Royal Commission on the National Health Service was published. Chaired by Sir Alec Merrison, the Commission covered England, Scotland, Wales and the parallel services in Northern Ireland and received 2460 written evidence submissions, held 58 oral evidence sessions, and met and spoke informally to about 2800 individuals. According to Merrison, ‘we were appointed at a time when there was widespread concern about the NHS’ following ‘a complete reorganisation of the service throughout the UK in 1973 and 1974 which few had greeted as an unqualified success’. Indeed, the commission’s report described a polarised set of perspectives about the health service, ‘In the evidence submitted to us we found a complete spectrum of descriptions of the present state of the NHS ranging from “the envy of the world” to its being “on the point of collapse”’.

This paper used the submissions of evidence from self-proclaimed ‘ordinary people’ – both workers and patients – to explore the various ways British citizens engaged with the welfare state, investigate how they felt about its services, and consider the affective and political function of complaint. In responding to calls for evidence published in newspapers, magazines, and broadcasted on television, the authors of these letters were participating in a conversation about staff and patient experiences of the NHS and demonstrating their commitment to the service’s future.

 

 

CHHS Research Seminar (online) – Dr Lindsey Porter

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We were joined by Dr Lindsey Porter on the 7th October who presented a paper on ‘Harm Reduction and Moral Desert in the Context of Drug Policy’.

The target of Porter’s discussion is folk intuitions that lay people have about justice in the context of drug policy – intuitions that take on a more or less moral-desert-based shape. Porter argued that even if we think desert is the right measure of how we ought to treat people, we ought to still be in favour of harm reduction measures for people who use drugs (dHR).

dHR approaches are those approaches to drug use that seek to reduce the harms of use without seeking to reduce the prevalence of it. Needle exchanges and supervised injections sites for IV drug users are taken to be the paradigm examples of such an approach. These measures are controversial with members of the public, and much of the opposition seems to come from something like an appeal to a desert conception of justice – the notion that a just state of affairs is one in which everybody gets what they deserve, no more, no less. A recent study, for example, found that ‘moral outrage’ predicts a preference for prevalence reduction (via criminal sanction, etc.) over dHR. The thinking seems to be that since drug use is wrong, letting people who use drugs suffer, and / or die, as a consequence of their use is just. Aiding their health and safety, while perhaps compassionate, is unjust.

Porter argued that there is a bad desert fit between using drugs and suffering avoidable harm even if it is the case that using drugs is morally wrong. Many of the possible harms of drug use are socially / policy driven, and much more problematic drug use is context dependent, not cleanly attributable to the decisions of the person who uses drugs. This means that even if drug use is wrong, people who use drugs deserve dHR policies, at minimum.

Centre for Health, Humanities and Science Launch Event

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The Centre for Health, Humanities and Science launch event took place on 08/10/17 in Cotham House, Bristol.

The Centre’s long-term aim is for the University of Bristol to be recognised as a leader in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in humanities, medicine, health and science. Our vision is to stand out as a centre of excellence of research, but research with impact.

The event was split into two parts in order to best showcase the diverse research interests across the faculty. During the afternoon session Faculty of Arts members, including PGRs, gave short presentations on papers or projects they were currently working on. Following the academic presentations, the evening session provided an opportunity to try out a range of initiatives at the intersection of humanities and health; we were  joined by Jules Olsen and Graham Coatman who ran a course on Singing for Lung Health at Southmead Hospital, Emma Lazenby presented and discussed a short animation produced by FORMED FILMS, and attendees were welcome to create their own artwork from a variety of media provided.

Those who presented papers during the afternoon session were also invited to contribute to our ‘visual gallery’ space in the evening. We displayed a copy of each speaker’s abstract along with three or four items that had inspired or provoked their research. These items included, but were not limited to, books, photographs, paintings and poetry. We also had a digital display of the artwork created by the intercalated medical humanities students from the ‘Out of Our Heads’ project, which focuses on engaging personally with medical themes through creative work.